Experimental study of model predictive control for an air-conditioning system with dedicated outdoor air system

Shiyu Yang, Man Pun Wan, Bing Feng Ng, Swapnil Dubey, Gregor P. Henze, Wanyu Chen and Krishnamoorthy Baskaran

Applied Energy, 2020, vol. 257, issue C

Abstract: Using separate cooling coils for sensible and latent loads provide extra control flexibility to optimise the energy efficiency and comfort in air-conditioning and mechanical ventilation (ACMV) systems. A popular implementation of such technology is dedicated outdoor air system (DOAS)-assisted separate sensible and latent cooling (SSLC) systems. However, a sophisticated control technique is needed to coordinate the control of multiple cooling coils in such systems. This paper presents a novel model predictive control (MPC) developed for a DOAS-assisted SSLC system. The MPC adopts a linear state-space model that captures building thermodynamics, thermal comfort and ACMV for building response prediction and optimization. Subsequently, a multi-objective cost function is employed to optimize energy use and thermal comfort while fulfilling constraints of predicted mean vote (PMV) (-0.5, 0.5) and relative humidity (0%, 65%) in buildings. The performance of the MPC for controlling a conventional single-coil air-handling unit (AHU) system and a DOAS-assisted SSLC system is experimentally investigated and compared to a conventional feedback-control-based building management system (BMS). The MPC system achieved 18% and 20% electricity savings for the single-coil AHU and DOAS-assisted SSLC, respectively, as compared to the BMS controlled single-coil AHU. Furthermore, indoor thermal comfort is significantly improved, compared to the BMS. DOAS-assisted SSLC is shown to be advantageous compared to single-coil AHU to achieve better indoor environment in terms of thermal comfort and humidity, when both systems are controlled by MPC.

Keywords: Model predictive control; Separate sensible and latent cooling; Thermal comfort; Real-time control and optimization; Dedicated outdoor air system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.113920

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