UPONOR: Ideas from Above
Recently, the surface cooling systems for buildings have undergone major changes, and now they compete with traditional air conditioners head-to-head. These systems are energy-conserving, easy-to-install and simple to operate, and the main things – they are sustainable and offer maximum comfort. These are the systems, which are promoted by Uponor, the leading solution provider for water supply and interior climate schemes, and also the supplier of diverse utility pipelines. We have already highlighted the Uponor thermally-active building systems, and now the offering manager Plumbing & IC of Uponor Aleksey Bazhukov is presenting another innovative solution - the ceiling panel-type cooling system Uponor Comfort.
Benefits of the Uponor Comfort in comparison with traditional air conditioning
The traditional air conditioning systems are based on circulation of chilled air within premises. Such solutions have the following drawbacks:
• High speed of interior airflow
• Nonuniform distribution of chill
• Noise
• Higher sickness rate due to poor quality of air
• Excessive power consumption and operating costs
• Greater sections of air ducts
• Aesthetic ugliness
• Dust accumulation
• Need for recurrent maintenance
For example, dry air causes irritation of mucous membranes of eyes and upper respiratory tract causing virus and bacteria-induced inflammatory diseases and colds. These drawbacks have determined the need for more sound and effective alternative solutions. Uponor has developed a number of designs, based on the heat exchange between air and cooled surface taking into account the human body’s heat exchange issues. The principle of Uponor Comfort operation consists in cooling of suspended ceiling the way absorbing heat and emitting chill at the same time.
This is so-called radiant constituent of heat exchange. Moreover, the air contacting with cold ceiling surfaces is getting cooler, which causes convective heat exchange hardly perceived by human being, let along disturbance. Man feels hot and unpleasant if located in the medium with temperature exceeding that of his skin. Therefore relatively low surrounding temperature makes one fell at ease. Thermal comfort is determined by degree of facilitation of human body’s heat balance.
There are four basic parameters of organic external heat exchange: 1 - heat emission, 2 - evaporation of perspired moisture, 3 - convection of surrounding air, 4 - heat transfer due to direct contact of a man with surfaces, for example with floor. The optimum interior values of these parameters are represented in Table 1. The Uponor ceiling system enables close approaching to these indices. The optimum heat exchange is reached, if the temperature of neighboring surfaces is approximately 8оC less than that of human body or lower, i.e. the temperature of surfaces in a premise should be not higher than +28-29оC at least.
The Uponor suspended ceiling can be cooled down to much lower temperature - +22оC - activating radiant heat exchange, that facilitates parameters closer to the optimum values, which are hard of achieve using the traditional cooling systems. In accordance with the European of standards, the nominal cooling capacity of ceiling panels is to be determined at 8оC temperature differential between air and coolant. This parameter for Uponor panels is 74 W/ m², i.e., 1 cm² contains 74 W of heat.
If the differential is 10 C, the output of the Uponor ceiling system is 92.5 W/ m², which is the outstanding index throughout the construction market. But it’s no way simply to multiply 92.5 W/m² by the area of ceiling, since it is just partially covered with active panels. Only on exclusion of the area covered with inactive panels, it is possible to specify the ceiling’s cooling capacity. If the Uponor installations serve as the heating units at 15 оC difference of temperatures between air and heattransfer agent, the heating capacity of panels reaches 100 W/m².
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Text by Elena Golubeva, images by Uponor