ACRECONF is a periodic Building Technology & Services seminar organised by DCISHRAE where technical papers are presented and different equipment manufacturers demonstrate their products.
I attended the conference at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on the 8th and 9th of January 2010.
Some technologies/concepts that caught my fancy were:
1. FABRIC DUCTS:
Traditional metal ducts are a headache. Fabrication, Installation, maintenance - all a huge headache. And duct fabricators are difficult people.
Imagine a ducting system made entirely of fabric. Imagine how easy it would be to install. Duct cleaning would involve simply unzipping the fabric duct to dismantle it, washing it, and putting it back again.
Fabric Ducts are not child's play. They have been used in INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS.
They also have excellent NOISE REDUCTION properties.
Images ctsy. DUCTSOX.
2. PHI CELL for Indoor Air Quality.
Indoor Air Quality in many buildings all over the world is absolutely deplorable. Because of ducts that have not been cleaned for decades. Also because fresh air dampers are kept closed by building services maintenance staff -- because fresh air load increases electricity consumption of the HVAC system and stresses it. Horrible, unethical, disastrous practice.
This LINK talks about PHI Cell technology's success in handling chemical odours, smoke, biological contaminants.
Image ctsy. BOUCHERENERGY.
Installation is easy. Just one cell in the main duct. And Air Quality improves.
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Apart from using technologies like the PHI CELL...
Ducts must be cleaned periodically too.
And of course, FRESH AIR DAMPERS must be kept open.
3. Sustainable Fire Engineering:
I also saw an interesting presentation on 'Sustainable Fire Engineering' by C. J. Walsh, Architect, Fire Engineer & Technical Controller.Sustainable Fire Engineering is a facet of "Sustainable Design".
Sustainable Design is a concept that is alien to most. Entails altering your entire approach to design of buildings and building services.
Standard practice is that building designers design from the point of view of 'merely satisfying building code requirements'.
But building codes are USUALLY VERY BASIC AND INADEQUATE.
The collapse of the WTC, New York, for example, points to bad design, and the attitude of 'merely satisfying building codes'...it also points to severe flaws in current building codes and safety practices.
Readers may not be aware that a B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire States Building in 1945, but it did not fall - because it was well designed, unlike the WTC.
Here's an interesting passage from C.J. Walsh's corporate website Sustainable-Design, that points to a certain philosophy that the building designer must inculcate:
"Ethical Design demands a high level of horizontal integration and co-ordination, on the part of a Designer, across a very wide range of environmental, social, economic, institutional and political performance, before a 'design synthesis' can be properly expressed in reality. This is, perhaps, one of the biggest challenges posed by the concept of Sustainable Development. Design Solutions must be appropriate to local geography, climate, economy, culture and social need, and be ...... 'person-centred' ; 'reliability-based' ; conform with the principles of 'SEED' (an acronym we introduced in 1995), i.e. Sustainable, Environment-friendly, Energy-efficient, Development ; and also conform with the principles of 'TEEN' (an acronym we introduced in 2004), i.e. Technically-feasible, Economically-viable, Ethically-informed, Need-demonstrated. |
