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Title: Improving Methods to Measure the Transport of Outdoor Pollutants into Residential Indoor Environments
Creator: Zhao, Haoran
Date: 2019
Description: Human exposure to ambient pollutants such as particulate matter, ozone, and oxides of nitrogen are associated with a variety of adverse health...
Show moreHuman exposure to ambient pollutants such as particulate matter, ozone, and oxides of nitrogen are associated with a variety of adverse health effects in epidemiology studies. However, much of human exposure to outdoor pollutants occurs inside residential buildings where people spend the majority of their time. One important determinant of indoor exposures to pollutants of outdoor origin is the “penetration factor” of the building envelope, which characterizes the ability of the building enclosure assembly to filter outdoor air as it infiltrates indoors. To date, measurements of envelope penetration factors for various outdoor pollutants in real indoor environments remain extremely limited, in part because current methods suffer from high costs, high uncertainty, and high levels of invasiveness presented to building occupants. Therefore, the research objectives in this dissertation aims to (1) develop and/or refine (as applicable) methods to measure the penetration of outdoor particulate matter, ozone, and nitrogen oxides in buildings and (2) apply them to characterize a diverse sample of residential buildings in Chicago, IL, including single-family homes, multi-family homes, and homes before and after they undergo energy efficiency retrofits. Results from this research will provide refined methods that others can use in field measurements and novel data for modelers to better assess indoor exposures to outdoor pollutants, which can then be used to improve exposure assessments for epidemiology studies.
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Title: Applying Statistical Methods to Air Quality and Asthma Data in Chicago Homes
Creator: Abromitis, Kari
Date: 2020
Description: This thesis investigates one years’ worth of indoor and outdoor air pollution data collected from Chicago area homes in relation to results...
Show moreThis thesis investigates one years’ worth of indoor and outdoor air pollution data collected from Chicago area homes in relation to results from monthly asthma surveys taken by the residents of those homes. This examination involves the processing and calibration of this large dataset, basic statistical analysis, and analysis of asthma as related to variation of air pollution and air pollution resulting from nearby transportation sources. The data was collected as a part of the Breathe Easy project, which was funded by the HUD and involved IIT and Elevate Energy, a Chicago-based economic development organization that promotes building equality through climate action. The majority of the data processing and analysis were performed using Python and it is intended for continued use during the ongoing Breathe Easy project. The basic statistical analysis of this data led to initial investigations of how the variability of pollutants on a daily basis triggered asthma severity and symptoms. There were limited relationships observed between asthma symptoms and pollutant variability, and it was found to not be as important as overall pollutant levels. A second investigation was pursued to examine how the proximity to transportation, including Metra trains, freight trains, elevated rail trains, highways, bus lines, and busy roads, affected indoor and outdoor pollution levels at each home, as well as concurrent asthma outcomes. Similar to previous research, there was some relation for transportation closeness, particularly for highways and Metra trains, and pollution emitted that effects the health of nearby residents. In addition, homes that had greater air infiltration (via envelope airtightness measurements) had elevated levels of particulate matter – the pollutant most associated with transportation proximity. This thesis provides a basis for further investigations in this ongoing project and for similar asthma and air quality relationship studies.
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Title: ADVANCING OPEN-SOURCE TOOLS FOR INDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND BUILDING SYSTEMS CONTROLS USING WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS
Creator: Ali, Akram Syed
Date: 2021
Description: Incorporating data monitoring and visualization tools in buildings can provide a glimpse into their energy use, thermal performance, daily...
Show moreIncorporating data monitoring and visualization tools in buildings can provide a glimpse into their energy use, thermal performance, daily operation, and maintenance requirements. However, buildings have traditionally been monitored using hardware and software that are expensive, proprietary, and often limited in terms of ease of use and flexibility. Many existing buildings remain unmonitored or poorly monitored, leaving many opportunities for energy savings and improving indoor environmental conditions unaddressed. To this end, the goal of this research is to develop and demonstrate an open-source hardware and software platform for monitoring and controlling the performance of buildings and their systems, called Elemental. It is designed to provide real-time data on indoor environmental quality, energy usage, heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) operation, and other factors to its users, and provide easy development of building controls. It combines: (i) custom low power printed circuit boards (PCBs) with RF transceivers for wireless sensors, control nodes, and USB gateway, (ii) a Raspberry Pi with custom firmware acting as a backhaul, and (iii) custom software applications that manage data storage, device configuration and interface for querying and visualizing the data in real-time. The platform is built around the idea of a private, secure, and open technology for the built environment. Among its many applications, the platform allows occupants to investigate anomalies in energy usage, environmental quality, and thermal performance. It also includes multiple frontends to view and analyze building activity data, which can be used directly in building controls. This proposal describes the development process of the hardware and software used in the Elemental platform along with three distinct applications including: (1) deployment in a research lab for long-term data collection and automated analysis, (2) use as a full-home energy and environmental monitoring solution, and (3) building heating system automation at the room-level with the development and deployment of a custom radiator control. Through these applications, this work demonstrates that the platform allows easy and virtually unlimited datalogging, monitoring, and analysis of real-time sensor data with low setup costs. Low-power sensor nodes placed in abundance in a building can also provide precise and immediate fault-detection, allowing for tuning equipment for more efficient operation and faster maintenance during the lifetime of the building.
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Title: Design and Fabrication of Battery-Operated Radiator Control (BORC) Utilizing 3D Printing Strategies
Creator: Riley, Christopher W.
Date: 2023
Description: The scope of this work aims to serve as a continuation of prior research focused on the “development and evaluation of an automatic steam...
Show moreThe scope of this work aims to serve as a continuation of prior research focused on the “development and evaluation of an automatic steam radiator control system or retrofitting legacy heating systems in existing buildings” (Syed Ali et al., 2020) by describing and testing the mechanical components of the developed controller in full detail. Other aspects of radiator efficiency are also explored. Primarily, this work aims to elaborate on the importance of material selection and mechanical properties of the design process. It also proposes initiative-taking solutions for the building’s energy recovery by monitoring the initial set up and focusing on certain details such as cardinal direction, thermal breaks, etc. These legacy systems are generally problematic when attempting to calculate energy efficiency, as a majority of radiator controls tend to be manual. Though there are comparable products within the European market, they cater to hot water systems and not steam, and in some instances require an internet bridge for operation (Tahersima et al., 2010). Since this is an extension of our earlier project, I will refer to it as Battery Operated Radiator Control (BORC) and the previous version as BERG’s Automated Radiator Control (ARC).
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Title: ESTIMATING PM2.5 INFILTRATION FACTORS FROM REAL-TIME OPTICAL PARTICLE COUNTERS DEPLOYED IN CHICAGO HOMES BEFORE AND AFTER MECHANICAL VENTILATION RETROFITS
Creator: Wang, Mingyu
Date: 2021
Description: PM2.5 are fine inhalable particles that are 2.5 micrometers or smaller in size. Indoor PM2.5 consists of outdoor PM2.5 (ambient PM2.5) that is...
Show morePM2.5 are fine inhalable particles that are 2.5 micrometers or smaller in size. Indoor PM2.5 consists of outdoor PM2.5 (ambient PM2.5) that is infiltrated into the indoor environment and indoor generated PM2.5 (non-ambient PM2.5). As people spend nearly 90% of their lifetimes indoors, with most of that time in their homes, PM2.5 exposure in homes results in severe health effects such as asthma. One strategy increasingly being used to dilute air pollutants generated indoors and improve indoor air quality (IAQ) in homes is the introduction of mechanical ventilation systems. However, mechanical ventilation systems also have the potential to introduce more ambient PM2.5 than relying on infiltration alone, although limited data exist to demonstrate the magnitude of impacts in occupied homes. The objective of this paper is to estimate the infiltration factor (Finf) of PM2.5 before and after installing mechanical ventilation systems in a subset of occupied homes. The data source utilized comes from the Breathe Easy Project, a more than 2-year-long study conducted in 40 existing homes in Chicago, IL aiming to explore the effects of three different types of mechanical ventilation system retrofits on IAQ and asthma. An automated algorithm was developed to remove indoor PM2.5 peaks in time-series data collected from optical particle counters deployed inside and outside of each home. The Finf was estimated using the resulting indoor/outdoor ratio with indoor peaks removed. Before mechanical ventilation retrofits, the weekly median Finf was 0.29 (summer median = 0.41, fall median = 0.26, winter median = 0.29, spring median = 0.30); after mechanical ventilation retrofits, the median Finf was 0.34 (winter median= 0.28, spring median = 0.45, summer median = 0.54, fall median = 0.20). Differences in Finf between pre- and post-intervention periods were not statistically significant (p = 0.23 from Wilcoxon signed rank tests). The median PM2.5 infiltration factor increased ~22% (from 0.27 to 0.33) with the installation of balanced ventilation systems with energy recovery ventilators (ERV), although differences were not statistically significant (Wilcoxon signed rank p = 0.35). The median PM2.5 infiltration factor decreased ~4% (from 0.28 to 0.27) after installing intermittent CFIS systems, which intermittently supply ventilation air through the existing central air handling units and associated filters (which were upgraded to a minimum of MERV 10 in all CFIS homes), although differences were not statistically significant (Wilcoxon signed rank p = 0.24). The median PM2.5 infiltration factor increased ~26% (from 0.35 to 0.44) with the installation of continuous exhaust-only systems, and differences were significant (Wilcoxon signed rank p = 0.04). These results suggest that the filtration mechanisms used on the CFIS and balanced systems were adequate for maintaining similar distributions of Finf values pre- and post-interventions whereas the increased delivery of outdoor air via the building envelope by exhaust-only systems significantly increased Finf following retrofits.
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Title: Evaluating the Impact of Residential Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation and Filtration Interventions on Adult Asthma-Related Health Outcomes in Chicago, IL
Creator: Kang, Insung
Date: 2022
Description: Human exposure to a variety of airborne pollutants is associated with various adverse health effects, ranging from respiratory symptoms to...
Show moreHuman exposure to a variety of airborne pollutants is associated with various adverse health effects, ranging from respiratory symptoms to exacerbation of chronic diseases to cardiovascular disease and cancer. While most of our knowledge of the adverse impacts of air pollution comes from studies utilizing outdoor air pollutants as surrogates for exposure, people spend most of their time indoors, especially at home, where pollutant concentrations are often higher than outdoors. And within homes, mechanical ventilation systems and filtration are increasingly recommended to provide fresh air for ventilation and dilute indoor pollutant sources. There are a variety of ventilation system types that can be used for home retrofits; however, there is limited information on how they affect indoor air quality (IAQ) from both indoor and outdoor sources and how they influence occupant health and well-being. Therefore, to fill some of these knowledge gaps, this research aims to evaluate the effects of indoor air quality broadly, as well as interventions with three common types of residential mechanical ventilation system retrofits (i.e., continuous exhaust-only, intermittent fan-integrated supply, and continuous balanced systems with energy recovery ventilators), on asthma-related health outcomes in a cohort of adults in Chicago, IL. The key findings of this dissertation indicate that exposures to indoor NO2 and PM, higher indoor temperature, and mold/dampness were associated with poorer asthma control. The home ventilation and air filtration interventions, regardless of ventilation system type, significantly improved asthma control of the study population (~4% increase in ACT score; p < 0.001), and led to reductions in indoor concentrations of formaldehyde (HCHO) (-19.5 ppb; -63%; p < 0.001), carbon dioxide (CO2) (-120 ppm; -15%; p < 0.001), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) (-1.8 ppb; -3%; p = 0.035), and particulate matter (PM), including PM1 (-4.9 µg/m3; -43%; p = 0.001), PM2.5 (-4.9 µg/m3; -39%; p = 0.003), and PM10 (-6.2 µg/m3; -41%; p = 0.003). Additionally, asthma control was significantly improved in all subgroups: participants who received both ventilation and filtration interventions (~6% increase in ACT score; p < 0.001); continuous exhaust-only systems (~3% increase in ACT score; p = 0.033); intermittent central-fan-integrated-supply (CFIS) systems (~3% increase in ACT score; p = 0.018); and continuous balanced systems with an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) (~7% increase in ACT score; p < 0.001). Indoor CO2 concentrations were significantly reduced in homes with continuous ventilation systems, including exhaust-only (-165 ppm, -20%; p = 0.005) and balanced ERV systems (-186 ppm, -23%; p = 0.004), while indoor particulate matter (PM1, PM2.5, and PM10) concentrations were significantly reduced in homes with ventilation systems with filtration upgrades, including CFIS (PM1: -5.3 µg/m3, -46%; PM2.5: -5.0 µg/m3, -39%; and PM10: -6.2 µg/m3, -41%; all p < 0.05) and balanced ERV systems (PM1: -7.5 µg/m3, -59%; PM2.5: -8.3 µg/m3, -58%; and PM10: -10.4 µg/m3, -61%; all p < 0.05). Last, results of a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of the three types of mechanical ventilation systems over an assumed 10-year life span, which predicted impacts on mortality and asthma outcomes based on measured impacts on two indoor pollutants – PM2.5 and NO2 – relative to initial and operational costs, as well as filtration upgrade costs, suggest that the intermittent CFIS system with improved MERV 10 filtration was the most beneficial approach, with the central benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 6.0, followed by the continuous balanced ERV system (central BCR = 3.7) and exhaust-only system (central BCR = 3.2). This dissertation provides the first known empirical data in the U.S. on asthma outcomes associated with different types of mechanical ventilation systems that have highly varying impacts on indoor pollutant concentrations of both indoor and outdoor origin and environmental conditions. Results are also expected to provide much-needed guidance to homeowners, contractors, builders, and agencies on the advantages and disadvantages of different types of residential mechanical ventilation systems.
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Title: A BIM-BASED LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT TOOL OF EMBODIED ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF REINFORCED CONCRETE TALL BUILDINGS
Creator: Ma, Lijian
Date: 2022
Description: Today 55 percent of population in the world lives in urban areas which is expected to increase to 68 percent by the year 2050. In the cities,...
Show moreToday 55 percent of population in the world lives in urban areas which is expected to increase to 68 percent by the year 2050. In the cities, high-rise buildings as symbols of the modern cityscape are dominating the skylines, but the data to demonstrate their embodied energy and environmental impacts are scarce, compared to low- or mid-rise buildings. Reducing the embodied energy and environmental impacts of buildings is critical as about 42 percent of primary energy use and 39 percent of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from the building sector. However, it is an overlooked area in embodied energy and environmental impacts of tall buildings. This doctoral research aims to investigate the effects of tall buildings on embodied energy and environmental impacts by using process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology within Building Information Modelling (BIM) environment, which provides construction industry platform to incorporate sustainability information in architectural design. This doctoral research is carried out through a literature review on embodied energy of high-rise buildings. Current LCA methods of buildings are also discussed in the literature review. It then develops a framework for BIM-based assessment of the embodied energy and environmental impacts of tall buildings. To achieve that, a case study of tall reinforced concrete building is applied, by using ISO 14040 and 14044 guidelines with available database, Revit and Tally application in Revit. The author concentrates on embodied energy and environmental impacts of reinforced concrete tall buildings. Finally, the association between design and construction variables with embodied energy and environmental impacts is explored. This research will lead to significant contributions. A comprehensive study on embodied energy and environmental impacts of high-rise building will address a major gap in LCA literature. Researchers and environmental consultants can use the results of this research to create design tools to evaluate environmental impacts of high-rise buildings. Also, architects can use the results of this research to develop insight into the environmental performance of tall buildings in early design stage. Architects and engineers can also use the results to optimize tall building design for low embodied energy and environmental impacts. Finally, the results of this research will enable architects, engineers, planners, and policymakers develop more sustainable built environments.
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Title: Developing Novel Optimization Algorithms Applied To Building Energy Performance and Indoor Air Quality
Creator: Faramarzi, Afshin
Date: 2021
Description: Residential and commercial buildings account for 23% of global energy use. In the United States, space heating, cooling, and lighting energy...
Show moreResidential and commercial buildings account for 23% of global energy use. In the United States, space heating, cooling, and lighting energy use accounts for 38%, 9%, and 7% of building energy consumption, which results in 54% of the total energy consumption of the building. Energy efficiency improvements in buildings require consideration of optimal design, operation, and control of building components (e.g., mechanical and envelope systems). We can address this task by taking advantage of computational optimization methods throughout the design, operation, and control processes.Non-gradient metaheuristic optimization methods known as metaheuristics are some of the most popular and widely used optimization methods in Building Performance Optimization (BPO) problems. Conventional metaheuristics usually have simple mathematical models with low rate of convergence. On the other hand, high-performance metaheuristic optimizers are efficient and usually have a fast rate of convergence, but their mathematical models are hard to understand and implement. As such, researchers are usually not inclined to employ them in solving their problems. To this end, we aimed at developing optimization algorithms which borrow simplicity from conventional methods and efficiency from high-performance optimizers to solve problems fast and efficiently while being welcomed by users from throughout the world. Therefore, the overarching objective of this work is defined to first develop novel optimization algorithms which are simple in mathematical models and still efficient in solving optimization benchmark problems and then apply the methods to building energy performance and indoor air quality (IAQ) problems. In the first objective of this work, which is the development phase, two continuous optimization methods and one binary optimizer are developed and are separately described in three different tasks. The first method called Equilibrium Optimizer (EO) is a simple method inspired by the mass balance equation in a control volume. The second optimization method called Marine Predators Algorithm (MPA) is a more complicated method compared to EO and is inspired by widespread foraging strategies between marine predators in the ocean ecosystem. Finally, the third method is the binary version of an already developed equilibrium optimizer called Binary Equilibrium Optimizer (BEO). The second objective of the dissertation is the application phase which focuses on the application of the developed methods and other widely used methods in research and industry for solving the almost new BPO and IAQ problems. The results showed that the developed methods were able to either reach more energy-efficient solutions compared to the other methods or to show a considerably faster rate of convergence compared to other methods in the problems in which the optimal solutions are similarly obtained by different methods.
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Title: DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF A NATIONALLY REPRESENTATIVE MODEL SET TO PREDICT THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND INDOOR AIR QUALITY (IAQ) IN U.S. RESIDENCES
Creator: Fazli, Torkan
Date: 2020
Description: Americans spend most of their time inside residences where they are exposed to a number of pollutants of both indoor and outdoor origin....
Show moreAmericans spend most of their time inside residences where they are exposed to a number of pollutants of both indoor and outdoor origin. Residential buildings also account for over 20% of total primary energy consumption in the U.S. and a similar proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, climate change is expected to affect building energy use and indoor air quality (IAQ) through both building design (i.e., via our societal responses to climate change) and building operation (i.e., via changing meteorological and ambient air quality conditions). The overarching objectives of this work are to develop a set of combined building energy and indoor air mass balance models that are generally representative of both the current (i.e., ~2010s) and future (i.e., ~2050s) U.S. residential building stock and to apply them using both current and future climate scenarios to estimate the impacts of climate change and climate change policies on building energy use, IAQ, and the prevalence of chronic health hazards in U.S. homes. The developed model set includes over 4000 individual building models with detailed characteristics of both building operation and indoor pollutant physics/chemistry, and is linked to a disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) approach for estimating chronic health outcomes associated with indoor pollutant exposure. The future building stock model incorporates a combination of predicted changes in future meteorological conditions, ambient air quality, the U.S. housing stock, and population demographics. Using the model set, we estimate the total site and source energy consumption for space conditioning in U.S. residences is predicted to decrease by ~37% and ~20% by mid-century (~2050s) compared to 2012, respectively, driven by decreases in heating energy use across the building stock that are larger than coincident increases in cooling energy use in warmer climates. Indoor concentrations of most pollutants of ambient origin are expected to decrease, driven by predicted reductions in ambient concentrations due to tighter emissions controls, with one notable exception of ozone, which is expected to increase in future climate scenarios. This work provides the first known estimates of the potential magnitude of impacts of expected climate changes on building energy use, IAQ, and the prevalence of chronic health hazards in U.S. homes.
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Title: Data-Driven Modeling for Advancing Near-Optimal Control of Water-Cooled Chillers
Creator: Salimian Rizi, Behzad
Date: 2023
Description: Hydronic heating and cooling systems are among the most common types of heating and cooling systems installed in older existing buildings,...
Show moreHydronic heating and cooling systems are among the most common types of heating and cooling systems installed in older existing buildings, especially commercial buildings. The results of this study based on the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) indicates chillers account for providing cooling in more than half of the commercial office building floorspaces in the U.S. Therefore, to address the need of improving energy efficiency of chillers systems operation, research studies developed different models to investigate different chiller sequencing approaches. Engineering-based models and empirical models are among the popular approaches for developing prediction models. Engineering-based models utilize the physical principles to calculate the thermal dynamics and energy behaviors of the systems and require detailed system information, while the empirical models deploy machine learning algorithms to develop relationships between input and output data. The empirical models compared to the engineering-based approach are more practical in a system’s energy prediction because of accessibility to required data, superiority in model implementation and prediction accuracy. Moreover, selecting near accurate chiller prediction models for the chiller sequencing needs to consider the importance of each input variable and its contribution to the overall performance of a chiller system, as well as the ease of application and computational time. Among the empirical modeling methods, ensemble learning techniques overcome the instability of the learning algorithm as well as improve prediction accuracy and identify input variable importance. Ensemble models combine multiple individual models, often called base or weak models, to produce a more accurate and robust predictive model. Random Forest (RF) and Extra Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) models are considered as ensemble models which offer built-in mechanisms for assessing feature importance. These techniques work by measuring how much each feature contributes to the overall predictive performance of the ensemble.In the first objective of this work the frequency of hydronic cooling systems in the U.S. building stock for applying potential energy efficiency measures (EEMs) on chiller plants are explored. Results show that the central chillers inside the buildings are responsible for providing cooling for more than 50% of the commercial buildings with areas greater than 9,000 m2(~100,000 ft2). In addition, hydronic cooling systems contribute to the highest Energy Use Intensity (EUI) among other systems, with EUI of 410.0 kWh/m2 (130.0 kBtu/ft2). Therefore, the results of this objective support developing accurate prediction models to assess the chiller performance parameters as an implication for chiller sequencing control strategies in older existing buildings. The second objective of the dissertation is to evaluate the performance of chiller sequencing strategy for the existing water-cooled chiller plant in a high-rise commercial building and develop highly accurate RF chiller models to investigate and determine the input variables of greatest importance to chiller power consumption predictions. The results show that the average value of mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and root mean squared error (RMSE) for all three RF chiller models are 5.3% and 30 kW, respectively, for the validation dataset, which confirms a good agreement between measured and predicted values. On the other hand, understanding prediction uncertainty is an important task to confidently reporting smaller savings estimates for different chiller sequencing control strategies. This study aims to quantify prediction uncertainty as a percentile for selecting an appropriate confidence level for chillers models which could lead to better prediction of the peak electricity load and participate in demand response programs more efficiently. The results show that by increasing the confidence level from 80% to 90%, the upper and lower bounds of the demand charge differ from the actual value by a factor of 3.3 and 1.7 times greater, respectively. Therefore, it proves the significance of selecting appropriate confidence levels for implementation of chiller sequencing strategy and demand response programs in commercial buildings. As the third objective of this study, the accuracy of these prediction models with respect to the preprocessing, selection of data, noise analysis, effect of chiller control system performance on the recorded data were investigated. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impacts of different data resolution, level of noise and data smoothing methods on the chiller power consumption and chiller COP prediction based on time-series Extra Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) models. The results of applying the smoothing methods indicate that the performance of chiller COP and the chiller power consumption models have improved by 2.8% and 4.8%, respectively. Overall, this study would guide the development of data-driven chiller power consumption and chiller COP prediction models in practice.
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