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PAN
PACIFIC SYMPOSIUM
on Building and Urban Environmental
Conditioning in Asia, Nagoya, Japan
March, 1995
A
PROPOSAL ON PAN PACIFIC COLLABORTION IN
HVAC
ENGINEERING
Steve
Y. S. Chen
In
1930, a joint venture was signed between American and Japanese companies to
manufacture air conditioning equipment in Japan. About the same time, American
equipment was sold to China to air condition a theater in Shanghai, one of the
earliest air conditioned buildings in China. Less than 20 years later, the
People's Great Hall was air conditioned by he equipment completely designed and
manufactured in China. By the early 1960,s, the air conditioning technology in
Japan had already reached a well advanced level, as evidenced by many world
class facilities built for the Tokyo Olympic. The next 30 years have been the
continued growth and advancement of technologies in Japan. Today the nation
exports air conditioning technology and equipment to many Pacific Rim Countries
and the rest of the world.
These
examples indicate that air conditioning technology can be acquired either by
direct purchase of the technology from the outside or by the homegrown industry.
In either case, technology transfer is further broken into equipment technology
and system technology. Again, each one of them can be imported or homegrown. For
example, Raffles City is the tallest and one of the most well known structures
in Singapore. Its air conditioning system was designed by a New York firm and
installed by a consortium of Japanese and Taiwanese contractors. The equipment
was imported from the United States. For this project, both equipment and system
technologies were imported. The Taipei World Trade Center was the first major
highrise building in Taiwan to install an ice storage system with low
temperature supply air. This system was also designed by a US firm but installed
by a local contractor. The major equipment was imported, but supplemented by
locally made equipment and materials as well.
Being
the inventor of air conditioning technology, the United States has been the
dominant exporter of equipment and system technologies from the 1930's to
1960's. In fact, air conditioning was a synonym for American excellency in
technology for many years in East and Southeast Asia. It was strictly a one-way
transfer of technology. But things began to Change dramatically during the 70's
and 80's. I There were more vigorous interactions among East Asia and Southeast
Asia countries and technology transfer and development became more
interdependent during this period. This trend has been expanded to include the
United States and other Pacific Rim countries in the 90's.
For
example, Japanese absorption refrigeration equipment and ductless split units
and fiberglass cooling towers made in Taiwan are now available in the United
States. Air conditioning equipment manufactured in Malaysia is freely exported
to many Pacific Rim countries. We are increasingly living in an exciting world
of mutual dependency and technology transfer. Eventually technology developed in
one country will be promptly and easily transferred to other countries and we'll
all enjoy the benefits of that new technology.
At
present, we still have not reached this ideal environment. Technology transfer
is still rather arbitrary, chaos and often downright inefficient. Thus the
question we are facing is how to get to this ideal state of technology transfer
in a most efficient way. My answer to this question is to develop a Pacific Rim
Air Conditioning, or PARAC Knowledge Base.
The
PARAC Knowledge Base will consist of five parts., Design Information,
Application Information, Product Information, Pacific Rim Experiences and
Advancement in Technology. The center piece of this Knowledge Base is Product
Information. Product Information has been the driving force of technology
transfer and will still be the key factor in successful technology transfer. For
example, if people need compressor technologies, they must know who makes the
compressor, where it is made, its performance and all other related information.
However, Product Information alone is not enough for the effective technology
transfer. It must be supplemented by system technology or more specifically,
design and application information. The information required For the design and
application of air conditioning products is scattered throughout hundreds of
books, journals, equipment manufacturer's bulletins and the project files of
design firms and construction companies. Unfortunately many of practicing
engineers and contractors do not have access to these information sources. The
concept of primary and secondary pumping is a case in point. This concept was
originally developed by a leading heating equipment manufacturer in the United
States in the 40's for the efficient transportation and circulation of hot water
heating medium. Later, it was expanded to include chilled water circulation and
variable volume pumping. Over the past 50 years, a tremendous amount of
information has been accumulated on this subject, yet I have witnessed numerous
cases of mis-applications and malfunctioning primary-secondary pumping systems.
Parts I and II of the PARAC Knowledge Base will provide necessary design and
application information to solve problems like this. Their major contents can be
summarized as follows:
I.
Design Information
II. Application Information
1.
Fundamentals
1. General
2.
HVAC Design
2. System and Equipment
Application
3
Health, Comfort and Life Safety Design
The
fundamentals contain basic and general information on HVAC design and
application. Theory, general engineering data, sound and vibration control are a
few examples of fundamental and general information. HVAC Design includes HVAC
planning and design procedures, load calculations, system selection and design,
piping and duct design etc. System and Equipment Applications cover the topics
such as HVAC system and equipment applications for residences, office buildings,
hospitals, schools, hotels and other types of buildings. Health comfort and Life
Safety design refer to minimum ventilation for health reasons and indoor air
quality, indoor environment criteria for comfort as well as smoke and fire
control for life safety. All these topics will be systematically discussed in
Parts I and II of the PARAC knowledge Base.
The
development of the Part I and II Knowledge Base sounds like an enormous task. In
reality, we have two excellent examples to follow. One is the ASHRAE handbook
and the other is the Society of Heating, Air Conditioning and Sanitary Engineers
of Japan Handbook. More specifically ASHRAE, 1992 System & Equipment and 1991
Application volumes and also Volume 3; Air Conditioning Design and Volume 6;
Application with System Design of the SHARE of Japan Handbook will provide a
wealth of information on design and application.
On
the surface, these two handbooks are very similar in contents. However, there is
a fundamental difference in philosophy of technology transfer. The ASHRAE's
concept of technology transfer is the empowerment of each individual. The
Handbook provides a basic information platform on which he or she can build up
his or her own expertise in design and application. Therefore the process of
design and application is highly individualistic. Each individual must acquire
Such design and application skills through his or her own effort, diligence,
opportunity and experience.
In
the SHARE of Japan Handbook, "Design" is discussed in great details not only in
the Air Conditioning Design Volume, but also in the Application Volume. To
mention a few examples, topics such as design procedure system selection and
design, smoke exhaust design, and system design for each of 8 different types of
buildings are extensively covered in the Design and Application Volumes.
Clearly there is a philosophical difference in the concept of technology
transfer. In America, how each individual performs will determine how a nation
performs as a whole. In Japan, as we as a group learn, I perform and that will
make a nation great. In my opinion, there are merits and demerits in both
approaches. In the Pacific Rim Air Conditioning knowledge Base, the merits of
both approaches should be combined and included in its design and application
information.
HVAC
equipment manufacturers have been and will continue to play a major role in
technology transfer and how to organize product information is quite critical
for accelerated information flow. Fig. 1 shows the items that should be included
in Product Information.
One
way to speed up technology transfer is to learn from each other's experiences.
The Pacific Rim Region spans over 10 time zones and includes extremely cold to
tropical climates. More than 10 major cities in the Region have a summer design
wet bulb temperature exceeding 27C. There are more than 60 central district
cooling systems in Japan, but none in other Pacific Rim countries except USA.
VAV systems are very popular in the United States, but seldom used in the other
countries. DX multiple unit systems dominate small to medium size buildings in
Japan. It is not quite so in the other countries, especially in USA. The mutual
exchange of information concerning the experiences of designing and applying
different equipment and systems will tremendously enhance our understanding of
air conditioning and related technologies and will undoubtedly contribute to the
increase flow of region to region and state to state commerce.
In
addition to "learning from the past experiences", we are also interested in the
latest advancement in new technologies. The Part V of the knowledge Base will
list the names, addresses and phone/fax numbers of researches, publishers,
societies and other organizations that can provide services for finding
information on the latest technological advancement.
Fig.
2 is an example of information available for an advanced technology, in this
case "Floor Discharge Air Conditioning". Just by reading through the 174 pages
of system and product description, system planning and installation examples, as
well as laboratory test results and analyses, one can get a fairly good idea
about the state of the art advancement in Floor Discharge air Conditioning
Technology.
Advanced technologies also include those technologies still being developed.
Fig. 3 is an example in this category. It is an ASHRAE technical data bulletin
that includes theories and models that describe the relationship between indoor
environmental parameters, such as temperature and indoor air quality and worker
productivity.
The
PARAC Knowledge Base is all electronic database, accessible through the Internet
or perhaps through one of commercially available on-line services. It will not
be universally open to the public. You need to have an account to access the
Internet or on-line service, but it will provide instant access to a vast source
of information.
The
database will contain numerous articles form journals and publications. Also,
abstracts of the article will be included. You can find complete bibliographic
information, such as title, author, publication, keywords and much more. For a
price, anyone will be able to access this database directly from the Pacific Rim
Air Conditioning Knowledge Base centrally located in the Pacific Rim Region, or
can be licensed to individual organizations to establish PARAC Sub-Centers as
shown in Fig. 4.
Initially the electronic database will be developed for HVAC researchers and
specialists, and the system will probably reside in a university or research
organization's computer system. Eventually the database system will offer two
levels of information access, an advanced or research level and a
professional-level. me professional's search for information will lead you
through the searching process, but will be limited in scope to design,
application or product information. In the advanced mode, a researcher or
specialist can sift through more materials and search for keywords within
abstracts and titles, providing much broader, in-depth information on a specific
subject.
The
Pacific Rim Air Conditioning knowledge Base System is an international
federation of electronic databases. The central database will provide an initial
impetus to develop a knowledge base in five major areas including Design,
Application and Product Information as well as information on Pacific Rim
experiences and advancement in Technology. The language to be used is English.
However, each licensed organization is free to use other languages such as
Japanese, Chinese or any other language to develop its own knowledge base
provided that it follows the same information organization, access method and
procedure, as well as language conversion for easy access and exchange of
information.
When
the Knowledge Base is used, researchers, design professionals, contractors,
owners, operators and manufacturers become both suppliers and receivers of
information. This is not a traditional case of suppliers of information on one
side and receivers of information on the other side. Everyone will benefit from
sharing information. It is a win-win situation, and the flow of information as
well as commerce will be greatly increased.
The
Pacific Rim Air Conditioning PARAC) Knowledge Base is an international effort.
Most of the Pacific Rim countries are at different stages of economical
development ranging from several hundred to more than 30,000 dollars per capita
in GDP or gross domestic product, but the Knowledge Base will provide the
design, installation and product information to meet specific needs in each
country. It will also provide access to the state of the art technologies to
broaden our awareness of what is happening around us. Through the PARAC
knowledge Base we will discuss among ourselves what we have learned in applying
certain equipment and systems, and above all, we will study the new ideas and
concepts to see how they can help us develop new technologies and generate new
markets in the future.
Knowledge is power, through the PARAC Knowledge Base, we will share the joy of
learning and gratification of achieving the highest level of knowledge in air
conditioning. Jointly we will accumulate a knowledge base that will guarantee us
a glorious future in the Pacific Rim Region.
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