Air Enthalpy as an IAQ Indicator in Hot and Humid Environment—Experimental Evaluation

Michał Piasecki, Krystyna Kostyrko, Małgorzata Fedorczak-Cisak and Katarzyna Nowak
Additional contact information
Michał Piasecki: Building Research Institute, Filtrowa 1, 00-611 Warszawa, Poland
Krystyna Kostyrko: Building Research Institute, Filtrowa 1, 00-611 Warszawa, Poland
Małgorzata Fedorczak-Cisak: Faculty of Civil Engineering, Cracow University of Technology, 24 Warszawska Street, 31-150 Krakow, Poland
Katarzyna Nowak: Faculty of Civil Engineering, Cracow University of Technology, 24 Warszawska Street, 31-150 Krakow, Poland

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 6, 1-21

Abstract: The authors studied the impact of indoor air humidity in the range of 60% to 90% on building user perception in the temperature range of 26 to 28 °C. The research thesis was put forward that the impact of humidity on indoor air quality dissatisfaction of building users in a warm and humid indoor environment is greater than that indicated in thermal comfort models. The presented experiment examined the indoor air quality perception of n = 28 subjects in the test chamber of a nearly zero energy building under ten environmental conditions, together with a thermal comfort assessment. The authors developed an experimental relation for predicting building users’ satisfaction based on the Weber–Fechner law, where the predicted percentage of dissatisfied users ( PD ) is determined by means of air enthalpy ( h ), PD = f( h ). The obtained results confirmed the sated thesis. Additionally, the intersection points of the experimental function and isotherms resulting from the Fanger model are presented, where the thermal comfort assessment starts to indicate lower user dissatisfaction results than experimental values. The authors recommend the experimental equation for humid air enthalpies in the range of 50 to 90 kJ/kg. The indoor air quality assessment based on the enthalpy value is simple and can be used to determine the overall Indoor Environmental Quality index of a building (IEQ index ).

Keywords: indoor air quality; IAQ; enthalpy; humidity; thermal comfort; TC; dissatisfaction; panel tests; nearly zero energy building; NZEB; indoor environmental quality; IEQ (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/6/1481/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/6/1481/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:6:p:1481-:d:335118

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().