Simulation and study of energy performance of water chilling plant for air-conditioning systems for hot and humid climate

Air-conditioning has played a vital role in a hot and humid country like Singapore, where cooling is integrated into the thermal comfort of our daily lives. While the traditional approach seeks to improve the efficiency of the chiller plant by focusing on the optimization of the individual equipment efficiency, the overall efficiency of the chiller plant is most effectively improved by considering the plant as a whole. In this study, TRNBuild is used to model a typical 20-storey office building in Singapore. A constant primary flow chiller plant is modelled using TRNSYS as a benchmark. Subsequently, an energy comparison study of the constant primary variable secondary chiller plant is performed. Based on the simulations, the latter has conserved 3.66% more energy than the benchmark. The constant primary variable secondary chiller plant can provide long-term savings in terms of energy consumption, but may not be suitable for small office buildings as additional plant space is required due to the secondary loop. More studies into variable primary flow chiller plant and other configurations and parametric studies are recommended to be conducted along with their economical assessment.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering