Comfort Cooling
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008Air Conditioning engineers tend to separate air conditioning into 2 applications, either comfort or process.
Comfort applications are aimed to give buildings a building indoor environment that is controllable and can be kept to a consistent temperature within the idyllic temperature for humans to work. The system given here would need to keep the indoor at a constant temperature regardless of the temperature outside.
The preferred temperature for people in a seated office environment is 22ºC, at this temperature, (which can be achieved by air conditioning) it has been proven that optimum workloads are reached, performance has been proven to decrease by 1% for every 1.5ºC change in the room temperature. The optimum temperature in a standing position tends to be at a slightly lower temperature. For shorter people the highest performance level tends to be at a slightly higher temperature.
The Hawthorne effect is described to enhance work productivity with the use of air conditioning (creating a thermal comfort).