Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment
Sustainable Energy Centre
Sustainable Energy Centre
Area: Mechanical Engineering
Potential research area: Energy and
sustainability in buildings
Proponents of passive and active designs of buildings claim credit for
achieving sustainability but both parties have not been able to prove
their claims. Currently there has been no clear or undisputable
method of showing the minimum energy consumption achievable at a
"sustainable" level by employing each approach. It can be argued
that a combined passive and active method can provide better solution
for delivering thermal comfort while at the same time keeping the energy
consumption low. This proposed research will develop a unified
approach to synergies of these two design methodologies. The
research will identify conditions of optimal synergy and potential
conflicts that prevent this optimum synergy to occur. The outcome
of this research is a design methodology which leads to the optimum
synergy of both passive and active designs. This research project
will be carried out on two types of buildings - residential and
commercial - which have different characteristics in terms of size,
function, number of occupants, etc. Therefore this topic can be
split into two PhD research projects as follows:
Title 1a: Optimising synergies between passive and active systems to
achieve energy sustainability in residential buildings
Title 1b: Optimising synergies between passive and active systems to
achieve energy sustainability in commercial buildings
Area: Mechanical Engineering
Potential research area: Building energy
provision
The energy demand for air conditioning of both commercial and
residential buildings has been escalating throughout the last decades.
In Australia, space heating and cooling represents about 40% and
domestic water heating about 30% of the energy demand of residential
buildings. Solar water heating is a well-established technology. In
Australia more market penetration of this technology is expected due to
improved public environmental awareness and government’s financial
inducements. Solar space heating systems, on the other hand, have not
gained market acceptance due mainly to high initial cost. In addition,
only a small amount of total annual heat collected by the system is
eventually utilised due to the short heating season in most Australian
population concentrations. Due to the absence of more viable systems in
the market, consumers resort to reverse cycle air conditioning systems
which provide both cooling and heating. With low initial costs, these
systems are dominating the air conditioning markets, particularly in new
housing. This, however, has resulted in dramatic increases in energy use
and summer peak power demand with associated electricity generation and
distribution requirements. Thermally driven cooling systems utilising
solar energy is a promising option. Seasonal match between solar
radiation availability and the building cooling load supports this
argument. Solar liquid desiccant air conditioning which provides both
cooling and dehumidification has been found to be technically viable.
Numerical studies on the existing solar hot water systems revealed that
despite the all year round demand for hot water, the “oversizing” of
solar hot water system seems inevitable due to the need to adequately
cover the winter peak hot water demand.
This research will investigate the integration of the provision
of heating, hot water, cooling and dehumidification for residential
buildings. The purpose of the research will be to assess the technical
viability of this integrated system through computer modelling and
simulation combined with experimental validation.
Area: Mechanical Engineering
Potential research area: Building energy
provision
Thermal comfort provision in residential and commercial buildings in
tropical
