Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the energy efficiency of air conditioning via the viewpoint of the vents arrangement. In the research, a real typical convenience store located in Taichung, Taiwan is selected as a case study. The computational fluid dynamic (CFD) technique is adopted to simulate the flow, thermal and humidity distribution inside the convenient store under both close and open automatic door conditions. The results show that good air conditioning vents arrangement could lead the flow going through the path which could make sufficient heat exchange with the indoor air and increase the energy efficiency. The short-path should be avoided in order for the air that goes through one inlet vent to escape through another outlet vent directly such that the fresh air could not make mixture and heat exchange with the indoor air. The present methodology of integrating CFD simulation and experiments is powerful to make fast and accurate design on the design of air conditioning vents layout.

Key words: Convenient stores, computation fluid dynamics, flow distribution, energy efficiency.