CH-81-05-4 — Radiant Spot Cooling of Hot Working Places

At many hot places of work it is neither practical nor economically possible to maintain a comfortable or even tolerable thermal environment by applying normal air-conditioning principles.

In industries with fixed and widely spaced workstations, especially energy can be saved by using spot cooling to provide acceptable conditions – in other words, by cooling each individual at his place of work instead of cooling the entire space. This method has the further advantage of allowing for individual control rather than controlling according to one set-point per room.

Spot cooling can be accomplished by convection alone, radiation alone or a combination of the two.

The present paper deals only with radiant spot cooling, i.e. by installing cold surfaces in the vicinity of each workstation.

When radiant cooling panels are installed there are several problems to consider, such as condensation, positioning and sizing of the panels and the discomfort of the asymmetric thermal environment to which each employee will be exposed.

The first part of the paper deals with the design of radiant spot cooling. This part includes estimation of the cooling effect on personnel, discussion of the condensation problem and an evaluation of the efficiency of radiant spot cooling. The second part deals with an experimental study on the effect of radiant spot cooling on subjects.