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Re: [EnergyPlus_Support] Should I model the plenum?



For calculating building energy consumption, modeling the plenums as 
separate zones is generally
not very important. There are cases where it will be important: 1 story 
building with a large roof area
and considerable outside air. For a multi-story office building it isn't 
important.

Fred Buhl

Michael J. Witte wrote:

>Should you model plenums?  It depends largely on the specific goals of the 
>analysis.  
>
>If you decide to ignore the plenums, you must make the conditioned zones tall 
>enough to include the plenum height so that the total area of exterior wall is 
>accounted for.  
>
>If you choose to model the plenums, then the plenum is modeled as a thermal 
>zone.  
>
>With EP-Quick it may be possible to create two buildings - one that is 7 
>stories with a floor-to-floor height of the conditioned space only, and then 
>another which is 7 stories with a floor-to-floor height of the plenum space 
>only, and then mix the two together.  All of the surface coordinates should be 
>OK except for the z values which could be easily modified to stack thing up 
>correctly.  Note that the plenum floors will come out of EP-Quick as multiple 
>zones, but these can be combined into a single zone simply be reassigning the 
>interior environment for the plenum surfaces and deleting the extra interior 
>surfaces that would be created in the plenum.  Well, it may not be a real 
>simple task, but it is doable.
>
>Mike
>
>
>On 1 Sep 2006 at 21:25, kir kumar wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Dear Mike,
>>    I have got a huge building with 7 floors, each floor is having a plenum.
>>All the return air from the zones enters the plenum before entering the air
>>handling unit in the mechanical room and this happens for every floor. One
>>side of the  air handling unit sucks the return air from the plenum and sends
>>fresh air from its other end into the supply duct as supply air to the
>>zones.
>>      My questions are 
>>  1. Should I model plenum as a separate zone?( I am actually using ep quick
>>to build my zones but unfortunately ep-quick does not have the capability of
>>building plenums)
>>  2. Should I just ignore the plenum and treat it as return air duct which
>>carries return air from zones to the air handler in mechanical room?
>> 
>>Can any one help me with those questions?
>>  thanks in advance,
>>kiran
>>
>> 				
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>>    
>>
>
>
>========================================================
>Michael J. Witte, GARD Analytics, Inc.
>EnergyPlus Testing and Support      
>EnergyPlus-Support@xxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>
>
>The primary EnergyPlus web site is found at:
>http://www.energyplus.gov
>
>The group web site is:
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EnergyPlus_Support/
>
>Attachments are not allowed -- please post any files to the appropriate folder in the Files area of the Support Web Site.
>
>EnergyPlus Documentation is searchable.  Open EPlusMainMenu.idf and press the "search" button.
> 
>Yahoo! Groups Links
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>
>  
>


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