INNOVAL
The hot climate at Le Port led the team in charge of the INNOVAL project to prepare a cooling strategy for different seasons. During the winter, natural ventilation is sufficient to cool offices and during the mid-season between the winter and the summer, natural ventilation is completed with ceiling fans. However, during the summer, natural ventilation coupled with ceiling fans are not sufficient, consequently, air conditioning has to be used. In buildings in Reunion Island, a significant percentage of the energy consumed is due to air conditioning, therefore, the air conditioning system selected here is an efficient one with a Variable Refrigerant Flow ensuring reliability and energy savings. Moreover, a software tool automatically regulates the power of cooling in relation to office use. Finally, while in Reunion Island, people are used to cooling below 24 °C, the air conditioning of the building cannot cool below 26 °C which is adequate with ceiling fans and natural ventilation. Indeed, with the assistance of ceiling fans, the felt temperature is reduced by 5 °C allowing a final felt temperature of 21 to 22 °C. In order to optimize the refrigerated unit power, the temperature adjustment consists of applying a difference of 5 °C between the outside and the inside. For example, if the outside temperature is 34 °C, the temperature adjustment will be 29 °C. All these choices in operation have led to a decrease from 100 kW to 30 kW in the power required by the refrigerated unit.
Heat recovery ventilation
Energy saving is one of the key issues for both fossil fuel consumption and protection of global environment.The rising cost of energy and the global warming underlined that developing of the improved energy systems is necessary to increase the energy efficiency while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The most effective way to reduce energy demand is to use energy more efficiently. Therefore, waste heat recovery is becoming popular in recent years since it improves energy efficiency. About 26% of industrial energy is still wasted as hot gas or fluid in many countries. However, during last two decades there has been remarkable attention to recover waste heat from various industries and to optimize the units which are used to absorb heat from waste gases. Thus, these attempts enhance reducing of global warming as well as of energy demand.