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Concept
Ventilative cooling
Summary
Ventilative cooling is the use of natural or mechanical ventilation to cool indoor spaces. The use of outside air reduces the cooling load and the energy consumption of these systems, while maintaining high quality indoor conditions; passive ventilative cooling may eliminate energy consumption. Ventilative cooling strategies are applied in a wide range of buildings and may even be critical to realize renovated or new high efficient buildings and zero-energy buildings (ZEBs). Ventilation is present in buildings mainly for air quality reasons. It can be used additionally to remove both excess heat gains, as well as increase the velocity of the air and thereby widen the thermal comfort range. Ventilative cooling is assessed by long-term evaluation indices. Ventilative cooling is dependent on the availability of appropriate external conditions and on the thermal physical characteristics of the building.
In the last years, overheating in buildings has been a challenge not only during the design stage but also during the operation. The reasons are:
High performance energy standards which reduce heating demand in heating dominated climates. Mainly refer to increase of the insulation levels and restriction on infiltration rates
The occurrence of higher outdoor temperatures during the cooling season, because of the climate change and the heat island effect not considered at the design phase
Internal heat gains and occupancy behavior were not calculated with accuracy during the design phase (gap in performance).
In many post-occupancy comfort studies overheating is a frequently reported problem not only during the summer months but also during the transitions periods, also in temperate climates.
The effectiveness of ventilative cooling has been investigated by many researchers and has been documented in many post occupancy assessments reports. The system cooling effectiveness (natural or mechanical ventilation) depends on the air flow rate that can be established, the thermal capacity of the construction and the heat transfer of the elements.
Official source
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