Thermal Comfort Analysis of Personalized Conditioning System and Performance Assessment with Different Radiant Cooling Systems

The radiant systems consume less energy and provide better thermal comfort as compared to the conventional system, but the main drawback of radiant technology is inability to cater the latent load and condensation. This problem has engaged researchers to push their emphasis on Personalized Conditioning System (PCS). It forms a micro-climate region near the occupant. This study is aimed at PCS combined with a radiant conditioning system, which evaluates the performance of the PCS and compares it with different radiant cooling systems. A radiant cubicle was used to investigate the performance of the PCS for both heating & cooling modes. For heating mode, the Standard Effective Temperature (SET) was calculated with the help of thermal comfort surveys which were in a range of 23.4°C to 27.3°C. For cooling mode, four different cases compared the performance of the system which are: Conventional Air Conditioning System (CACS), Radiant Cooled Ceiling System (RCCS), Personalized Radiant Conditioning System (PRCS), and both PRCS-RCCS coupled. It was observed that PRCS alone reaches the thermal comfort criteria with low energy consumption. The energy-saving of RCCS-PRCS was achieved 38% when compared with CACS. It can be concluded that PRCS is a new step in the field of thermal comfort.