Improving Ventilation Effectiveness and Thermal Comfort Using Chair Fans to Aid Displacement Ventilation

The aim of this work was to model and simulate the performance of displacement ventilation system (DV) assisted by chair fans (CF) in providingthermal comfort (TC) and good indoor air quality (IAQ) for an office occupant at lower energy consumption. An office space was modeled usingcommercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. The CFD model was coupled to a segmental bio-heat model to predict simulated occupantskin temperatures, which were used for evaluation of local and overall thermal comfort and sensation of simulated occupant. In addition, the CFD modelpredicted the IAQ by evaluating the ventilation effectiveness based on concentration fields of CO2 at the breathing zone of occupant. The use of CFproduced better IAQ and TC compared to DV system mainatained at same conditions. The novel system reached 20.84% savings in energyconsumption over a standalone DV system providing same performance.