Integrated Temperature and Humidity Control: A Unique Approach

摘要

During hot and humid periods, a comfortable indoorenvironment can be attained only by controllingboth the dry-bulb temperature and the humidity in thespace. Conventional thermostats control the ON/OFFstatus of a cooling plant to maintain only the dry-bulbtemperature within the conditioned space. This canresult in the space dew-point temperature increasingto uncomfortable levels, especially during cool andhumid times of the day and/or when there is high latentgain. Consequently, the occupant must resort toundesirable and inefficient interventions (e.g., manuallylowering the space dry-bulb temperature setpoint) to "sweat out" the water from the air. An innovativecontroller, the Integrated Temperature andHumidity Controller, has been invented for controllingboth the dry-bulb temperature and the absolutemoisture content of the air in a conditioned space.These new algorithms have been implemented in aproduct prototype, and limited field tests have beenperformed. Preliminary results confirm the expectedoperation and performance of the controller and itsrobustness and are extremely encouraging.