Air Conditioning Systems              

Almost every commercial building, and office have an air conditioning unit. It has become a necessity of modern life. For a small office, a window air conditioning unit will suffice. These are self contained units which do not need much skill to install. Nowadays, the trend is to use split air conditioning units in the average sized office and home because they are quieter. However, there are some amount of drilling, joining of tubes, vacuuming, charging of refrigerant gas, and other installation works to be done.

Larger buildings make use of Central Air Conditioning. The basic concept of cooling or heating remains the same. However, the system can be designed to be very complex if necessary. Automatic temperature controls, microprocessor and operation logic controls, building automation controls, and other smart features have made some systems beyond the handling capability of many normal technical people.

New types of refrigerant are constantly being developed to produce minimal damage to the environment. New materials have to be used to work with the new refrigerants. Better efficiency methods are adopted for maximum energy savings.

Air conditioning is more than just cooling or heating the environment. Users are becoming more and more conscious of indoor air quality. Filtration of air particles, renewal of fresh air, removal of smell, and removal of chemical contaminants are some of the factors which air conditioning designers have to consider.

In an energy conscious world, concepts like ice storage, district cooling, cogeneration, evaporative pre-cooling, chiller sequencing, decoupling systems, and many other methods have been tried, and evaluated.

Air conditioning comprises many areas of Mechanical and Control Engineering. In the following pages, we attempt to explore some of them.