A review of different strategies for HVAC energy saving

Decreasing the energy consumption of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems is becoming increasingly important due to rising cost of fossil fuels and environmental concerns. Therefore, finding novel ways to reduce energy consumption in buildings without compromising comfort and indoor air quality is an ongoing research challenge. One proven way of achieving energy efficiency in HVAC systems is to design systems that use novel configurations of existing system components. Each HVAC discipline has specific design requirements and each presents opportunities for energy savings. Energy efficient HVAC systems can be created by re-configuring traditional systems to make more strategic use of existing system parts. Recent research has demonstrated that a combination of existing air conditioning technologies can offer effective solutions for energy conservation and thermal comfort. This paper investigates and reviews the different technologies and approaches, and demonstrates their ability to improve the performance of HVAC systems in order to reduce energy consumption. For each strategy, a brief description is first presented and then by reviewing the previous studies, the influence of that method on the HVAC energy saving is investigated. Finally, a comparison study between these approaches is carried out. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.