SUMMARYThe operation of the building heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system is a critical activity in terms of optimizing the building's energy consumption, ensuring the occupants' comfort, and preserving air quality. The performance of HVAC systems can be improved through optimized supervisory control strategies. Set points can be adjusted by the optimized supervisor to improve the operating efficiency. This paper presents a cost-effective building operating strategy to reduce energy costs associated with the operation of the HVAC system. The strategy determines the set points of local-loop controllers used in a multi-zone HVAC system. The controller set points include the supply air temperature, the supply duct static pressure, and the chilled water supply temperature. The variation of zone air temperatures around the set point is also considered. The strategy provides proper set points to controllers for minimum energy use while maintaining the required thermal comfort. The proposed technology is computationally simple and suitable for online implementation; it requires access to some data that are already measured and therefore available in most existing building energy management and control systems. The strategy is evaluated for a case study in an existing variable air volume system. The results show that the proposed strategy may be an excellent means of reducing utility costs associated with maintaining or improving indoor environmental conditions. It may reduce energy consumption by about 11% when compared with the actual strategy applied on the investigated existing system.

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New time averaged data of two‐phase flow in bubbly and slug regimes are presented. A modified dual spherical tipped optical fiber probe is used to measure local void fractions, gas velocity and bubble sizes. Hot film anemometry was used to measure the local mean liquid velocity axially. The void fraction, gas and liquid velocities values were presented as averages over the long and short dimensions respectively. Also core values of these variables are presented along the smaller dimension of 12.7 mm, near the plane of symmetry of the longer dimension, to show the most general trend of the different bubbly and slug flow runs. Bubble sizes obtained experimentally were compared with predictive models applied to circular geometries and were found to have a reasonable agreement. It was also interesting to find that local void fractions measured using hot film anemometers were comparable to those found by optical fiber probes. Frequencies of interfacial passage of bubbles and slugs are presented which show rather flat profiles across the channel. It is hoped that these data can be further used in predictive two‐phase two‐fluid models in the future. Lastly of interest is the fact that slip values near the boundaries were shown to be less than 1.0 for some cases in bubbly flow similar to those observed in circular geometries.

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The solid particle receiver (SPR) is a direct absorption central receiver that can provide a solar interface with thermal storage for thermochemical hydrogen production processes requiring heat input at temperatures up to 1000 C. In operation, a curtain consisting of ∼690 μm ceramic particles is dropped within the receiver cavity and directly illuminated by concentrated solar energy. The heated particles exit the receiver and may either be stored or sent through a heat exchanger to provide process heat input. The performance of the receiver is dependent on the characteristics of the particle flow including velocity and opacity (optical density). In addition, because the SPR will have an open aperture there is also a possibility that the flow may be disturbed by high ambient winds. Computational models have been and are currently being used to simulate receiver performance at power levels up to several MWt. However, due to the complex two-phase nature of the solid particle flow, such models rely on experimental data both to provide physical input, such as boundary conditions, as well as to provide a point of comparison for model validation. In this paper, we present experimental results from tests performed using a small scale unheated solid particle curtain. These tests focus on the measurement of the flow characteristics of the solid particle curtain as it falls from a near-zero velocity discharge slot to a collection point three meters below. The results include measured values for the variation of velocity, solids volume fraction, curtain width, and curtain opacity along the length of the curtain.