Innovative products to improve energy efficiency and air quality focus of winning technical papers

Low energy façades, smart controls to improve indoor air quality, ambient loop heat networks with interseasonal storage, and fault detection in air handling units are the topics addressed by technical papers recognised with CIBSE awards.

The winning papers, published in CIBSE’s research journal, Building Services Engineering Research & Technology Journal (BSER&T), have been selected based on international interest and significance.

Of the four awards, the Dufton Silver and Napier Shaw Bronze Medals are presented to papers relating to fundamental research, while the Barker Silver and Carter Bronze Medals are awarded to papers on application of research in practice.

With façade performance in mind, the Dufton Silver Medal was awarded to Michalis Michael and Mauro Overend of the University of Cambridge for their paper on Closed cavity façade, an innovative energy saving façade. It describes a novel façade design using a double or triple glazed inner layer and single glazed outer layer to form a sealed non-ventilated cavity with an automated shading device in between, demonstrating significant energy saving potential.

Akos Revesz, Phil Jones, Chris Dunham, Anthony Riddle, Norman Gatensby, Graeme Maidment of London South Bank University for their paper Ambient loop district heating and cooling networks with integrated mobility, power and interseasonal storage. The system demonstrates negligible losses and much greater efficiencies than traditional district heat networks, which if applied to wider urban areas could deliver significant carbon emission savings in the UK.

The Barker Silver Medal was awarded to the paper Improving indoor air quality and occupant health through smart control of windows and portable air purifiers in residential buildings, by Yan Wang, Elizabeth Cooper, Farhang Tahmasebi, Jonathon Taylor, Samuel Stamp, Phil Symonds, Esfandiar Burman, Dejan Mumovic of University College London. The paper describes an approach to optimising the operation of home air purifiers using smart controls in a novel framework that jointly controls the air purifiers and windows to maintain thermal comfort and achieve effective PM2.5 removal. Simulation results suggest that such a hybrid control strategy can result in considerable health benefits at low additional energy costs.

Narges Torabi, Huseyin Burak Gunay, William O’Brien, Ricardo Moromisato of Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, were awarded the Carter Bronze Medal for their paper, A holistic sequential fault detection and diagnostics framework for multiple zone variable air volume air handling unit systems. This paper describes a sequential hierarchical fault detection and diagnostics framework to prioritise faults according to a rational hierarchy to address detectability and significance of faults in air handling units and terminal units to avoid false positives and false negatives and prioritise high-impact faults in the system.

The awards will be presented at the CIBSE President’s Awards dinner in October.