Enhancement of Thermal Comfort Inside the Kitchen of Non-Airconditioned Railway Pantry Car

Abstract

There are ample literature studies available, focusing on hot-humid built environment, which have achieved an increase in thermal comfort conditions by proper installation of ventilation-systems. The present thermal comfort study has been carried out in the kitchen environment of a non-air-conditioned railway pantry car in Indian Railways. The purpose is to enhance thermal comfort level under the currently applied ventilation system inside the kitchen of pantry car by determining the standard effective temperature (SET) index. During the summer and winter seasons, a field study was carried out to obtain the value of air temperature, globe temperature, relative humidity, and air velocity inside the pantry car for estimation of the SET index. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis was used to obtain a better-modified case model of the pantry car kitchen for the improvement of thermal comfort. The design interventions for the pantry car kitchen were created, with emphasis on increasing energy efficiency based on low-power consumption air ventilation system. The study results indicated that, modified case-I model has a better ventilation design concept as compare to the existing and other models, which increased the air velocity and significantly decreased the air temperature inside the kitchen of pantry car at all cooking periods. A value of SET (28.6–30℃) was found with a comfortable thermal sensation within all cooking periods, which is better for the pantry car workers. This finding suggests a sustainable improvement in the thermal environment of the "non-air-conditioned" pantry car kitchen in the Indian Railways, which can be applied immediately.

Factors affecting on human thermal comfort inside the kitchen area of railway pantry car - a review

“…As reported by Chandel and Aggarwal [104], people in India during the winter season normally wearing "sweater, jacket, inner thermal, socks, cap" compared to the 0.9 clo value "sweater, long sleeve shirt, heavy slacks" which recommended by ASHRAE. However, pantry car chef 's generally wearing clothes according to Indian style outfits while performing the cooking period inside the kitchen of the railway pantry car [128][129][130][131][132][133][134]. Present study clothing value can be estimated for the "summer" and "winter" season as per the recommended Table 5.…”

Investigating thermal environment inside the kitchen of air‐conditioned pantry car on Indian Railway using CFD

“…Many investigators analyzed adequate thermal comfort in the kitchen environment by properly displacing the air supply system's state and validated the design modification using the “computational fluid dynamics (CFD)” simulation (Livchak et al, 2005; Qiu‐Wang & Zhen, 2006; Ren et al, 2012; Sabtalistia et al, 2014; Yuan et al, 2013). The CFD software was used in various countries to determine thermal comfort analysis such as; Anysys fluent 12.12 version in Indonesia (Sabtalistia et al, 2014), Fluent/Uns 5.3 in Malaysia (Zainuddin et al, 2014), AirPak 3.0 version in China (Li et al, 2014), ANSYS Fluent 12.0 version in Malaysia (Yahya et al, 2019), Airpak software 3.0 version in China (Yuan et al, 2013), ANSYS Fluent (CFD solver package) in Italy (Buratti et al, 2017), ANSYS fluent R14.5 version in India (Alam & Salve, 2021), CFX5 (version 5.5.1) in United Kingdom (Yang et al, 2006). In kitchen environment proper capture and containment efficiency could be achieved with an “airflow rate of 12,600 m 3 /h with an air supply temperature of 28°C” (Li et al, 2014).…”

CFD Modelling of Thermal Comfort in the Passenger Coach

“…In the study [22], Palmowska and Walczyk analysed indoor thermal and humidity conditions for six different cases of air distribution. Thermal comfort in the kitchen environment of a non-air-conditioned railway pantry coach in Indian Railways was the subject research in the study Alam and Salve [23]. The evaluation of thermal comfort in a double-decker train cabin for summer and winter conditions was conducted in the study of Konstantinov and Wagner [24].…”