Development of Personalized Radiant Cooling System for an Office Room

The building industry nowadays is facing two major challenges increased concern for energy reduction and growing need for thermal comfort. These challenges have led many researchers to develop Radiant Cooling Systems that show a large potential for energy savings. This study aims to develop a personalized cooling system using the principle of radiant cooling integrated with conventional all-air system to achieve better thermal environment at the workspace. Personalized conditioning aims to create a microclimatic zone around a single workspace. In this way, the energy is deployed only where it is actually needed, and the individual s needs for thermal comfort are fulfilled. To study the effect of air temperature along with air temperature distribution for workspace, air temperature near the vicinity of the occupant has been obtained as a result of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation using FLUENT. The analysis showed that personalized radiant system improves thermal environment near the workspace and allows all-air systems to work at higher thermostat temperature without compromising the thermal comfort, which in turn reduces its energy consumption.