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Evaluating the improvement effect of low-energy strategies on the summer indoor thermal environment and cooling energy consumption in a library building: A case study in a hot-humid and less-windy city of China

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  • Building Systems and Components
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Abstract

Public buildings such as libraries consume a vast amount of cooling energy for maintaining a comfortable and stable indoor environment in summer, especially in the hot-humid climate. This study used a case study approach to discuss the effect of low-energy strategies that can be applied to improve indoor thermal environment and cooling energy consumption of library buildings in hot and humid cities like Nanning City (a southern city, China). The use of cooling window shutters (a shutter with the effects of shading and evaporative cooling) and ceiling fans for generating airflow was considered as applicable energy-saving measures in this study, and a university library was selected as the study building in which the two energy-saving measures were employed. The SET* and annual cooling load before and after the adoption of the proposed measures were quantitatively investigated with a building energy consumption simulation software (DesignBuilder). Simulation results showed that the daytime SET* values can be reduced by 3.0 °C and 4.5 °C respectively on a typical summer day after the use of the cooling shutters and ceiling fans. Moreover, the cooling loads can also be decreased by 8.4% and 16.6% respectively. Particularly, the combination of these two measures enabled the daytime SET* value and annual cooling load lower by 7.0 °C and 60.8% respectively.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51968003) and the Guangxi Science and Technology Project (No. AB16380193).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guangxi University, Nanning, 530004, China

    Yigang Li & Jiang He

  2. Guangxi Key Laboratory of Disaster Prevention and Engineering Safety, Nanning, 530004, China

    Jiang He

  3. Key Laboratory of Disaster Prevention and Structural Safety of Ministry of Education of China, Nanning, 530004, China

    Jiang He

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  1. Yigang Li
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  2. Jiang He
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Correspondence to Jiang He.

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Li, Y., He, J. Evaluating the improvement effect of low-energy strategies on the summer indoor thermal environment and cooling energy consumption in a library building: A case study in a hot-humid and less-windy city of China. Build. Simul. 14, 1423–1437 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-020-0747-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12273-020-0747-6

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