Numerical Analysis on the Performance of a Radiant Cooling Panel with Serpentine-Based Design

Abstract

Radiant cooling systems (RCS) are gaining acceptance as a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) solution for achieving adequate thermal comfort and maintaining acceptable indoor air quality inside buildings. RCS are well known for their energy-saving potential; however, serious condensation problem hinders the growth of this technology. In order to prevent the risk of condensation, the supply water temperature is kept higher than the dew point temperature of the air inside the room. The full potential of the cooling power of a radiant cooling panel is limited. Therefore, this article is on maximizing the cooling capacity of a radiant cooling panel, in terms of flow configuration. Radiant cooling panels (RCP) with different chilled water pipe configurations are designed and compared, side by side with the conventional serpentine flow configuration. The cooling performance of the radiant cooling panels is evaluated by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with Ansys Fluent software (Ansys 2020 R2, PA, USA). Under similar flow and operating conditions, the common serpentine flow configuration exhibits the least effective cooling performance, with the highest pressure drop across the pipe. It is concluded that the proposed designs have the potential of improving the overall efficiency of RCP in terms of temperature distribution, cooling capacity, and pressure drop.

Radiant Floor Cooling Systems: A Critical Review of Modeling Methods

“…In the assessment, they also evaluated the effect of pipe spacing on temperature non-uniformity at the floor surface. As might be expected, doubling in the pipe spacing from 150 mm to 300 mm caused a significant increase in the floor surface temperature variation; with an average temperature of 16.2-16.3 • C, the largest temperature difference in the latter condition was more than 1 • C, while the former condition caused a smaller difference of 0.1 • C. Finally, a 3D model was developed by Radzai et al [30] and used to compare different pipe positioning possibilities through FVM, finding the best temperature uniformity with a two-inlet-two-outlet counterflow serpentine. The model was implemented on Ansys Fluent software.…”

“…Since these terms were not considered significant hints for the survey, they have been hidden from the word cloud in order to place greater emphasis on aspects potentially useful for the models' classification. Antonopoulos, 1992 [11], Kilkis, 1994 [12], Schmidt, 2004 [13], Laouadi, 2004 [14], Weber, 2005 [15], Simões, 2006 [16], Larsen, 2010 [17], Jin, 2010 (1) [18], Jin, 2010 (2) [19], Liu, 2011 [20], Zhang, 2012 [21], Li, 2014 (1) [22], Li, 2014 (2) [23], Tian, 2014 [24], Su, 2015 [25], Wu, 2015 [26], Qin, 2017 [27], Merabtine, 2019 [28], Li, 2021 [29], Radzai, 2021 [30], Zheng, 2023 [31], Lim, 2006 [32], Henze, 2008 [33], Grassi, 2011 [34], De Carli, 2012 [35], Zhang, 2013 [36], Wang, 2021 [37], and Lu, 2022 [38].…”

Effect of Inlet Air Humidity Control on a Novel Indirect Condensative Cooling Performances in Achieving Air Thermal Comfort

“…The simulation result shows that the radiant cooling system pipe's conductivity has a great impacts to its water supply inlet velocity. Radzai et al, [18] experimentally investigated the effectiveness of the radiant ceiling panel cooling system in hot and humid climatic conditions. It recommended that the supply of chilled water flowrate ranged from 0.01 m 3 /h/m 2 to 0.04 m 3 /h/m 2 and water temperature ranging between 14 o C and 20 o C could prevent the condensation risk.…”

Cooling Thermal Comfort and Efficiency Parameters of Ceiling Panels, Underfloor Cooling, Fan-Assisted Radiators, and Fan Coil

“…Ceiling radiant cooling panels (CRCPs) are widely investigated due to the various applications in both heating and cooling together with technical design perspectives on many aspects. A large number of studies exists, addressing simulations [9] as well as experimental assessments: the cooling capacity and energy performance of CRCP systems can be improved in many different ways. An open-type CRCP system with air circulators provided a maximum increment of 26.2% in cooling capacity [10], while segmented and concave surfaces provided an improvement in energy performance relatively to flat panels [11].…”