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Energy Efficiency in Non-domestic Buildings: Policies, Designs, Methodologies and Technological Solutions

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Green Building".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2022) | Viewed by 5940

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
School of Computing, Engineering and Built Environment, Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK
Interests: energy efficiency design; passive solar design; energy benchmarking; daylighting design; energy simulation; whole-life costing; renewable energy; sustainable design
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Non-domestic buildings are among the highest energy consumers due to the diversity and complexity of system and service end-users provided. Key determinants of energy consumption of non-domestic buildings are heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, office equipment and computers, lighting types, and other energy-related equipment. Over the last 50 years, an increasing amount of research works have been undertaken to achieve energy demand and carbon emission reduction from buildings. While it is more challenging to achieve energy efficiency of the non-domestic building stock, different design approaches and methodologies have been explored, such as passive design strategies, utilisation of renewable energy or low/zero carbon technologies, sustainable building materials, and high-performance building services and systems. This Special Issue aims to extend the analysis on energy efficiency for non-domestic buildings, by focusing on the discussions on (but not limited to) the following key areas

  • State-of-the-art of renewable energy/low-carbon technological interventions;
  • Energy-efficient passive design approaches;
  • Sustainable building materials;
  • Energy policy and regulations;
  • Energy and performance benchmarking for large building stock;
  • Experimental and simulation analysis;
  • Energy demand reduction analysis;
  • Methodological and analytical approach to building energy data;
  • Cost–benefit/cost-effective measures and whole life cycle assessment;
  • Affordability and security of future energy use in non-domestic buildings;
  • Technical and financial barriers to achieving energy efficiency.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Architecture.

Dr. Ingliang Wong
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Energy-efficient design
  • Technological solutions
  • Policy and regulations
  • Energy benchmarking
  • Non-domestic buildings
  • Sustainable design
  • Renewable energy technologies
  • Innovative building façade designs

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 3918 KiB  
Article
Design of a Building-Scale Space Solar Cooling System Using TRNSYS
by David Redpath, Anshul Paneri, Harjit Singh, Ahmed Ghitas and Mohamed Sabry
Sustainability 2022, 14(18), 11549; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su141811549 - 15 Sep 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1803
Abstract
Research into solar absorption chillers despite their environmental benefits has been limited to date to mainly larger systems whilst ignoring smaller building-scale units, which can significantly benefit from the use of optimally designed, low concentrating, non-imaging optical reflectors. A solar absorption chiller system [...] Read more.
Research into solar absorption chillers despite their environmental benefits has been limited to date to mainly larger systems whilst ignoring smaller building-scale units, which can significantly benefit from the use of optimally designed, low concentrating, non-imaging optical reflectors. A solar absorption chiller system designed to provide year-round space cooling for a typical primary health care facility in Cairo, Egypt, was designed to match local ambient, solar, and occupancy conditions, its performance simulated and then optimized to minimize auxiliary power consumption using the TRNSYS18 software, TRNOPT. Different configurations of collector types, array areas, storage sizes and collector slopes were used to determine the optimum specifications for the system components. Non-concentrating Evacuated Tube Collectors (ETCs) were compared with the same Evacuated Tube Collectors but integrated with external Compound Parabolic Concentrators (CPCs) with a geometric concentration ratio of 1.5X for supplying thermal energy to the single-effect absorption chiller investigated. This paper describes a user-friendly methodology developed for the design of solar heat-powered absorption chillers for small buildings using TRNSYS18 employing the Hookes–Jeeves algorithm within the TRNOPT function. Clear steps to avoid convergence problems when using TRNSYS are articulated to make repeatability for different systems and locations more straightforward. Collector array areas were varied from 30 m2 to 160 m2 and the size of the water-based thermal storage from 1 m3 to 3 m3 to determine the configuration that can supply the maximum solar fraction of the building’s cooling requirements for the lowest lifetime cost. The optimum solar fraction for ETCs and CPCs was found to be 0.66 and 0.94, respectively. If the current air conditioning demand is met through adoption of the CPC-based solar absorption systems this can potentially save the emission of 3,966,247 tCO2 per annum. Full article
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20 pages, 1175 KiB  
Article
Energy Efficiency Measures in Bakeries toward Competitiveness and Sustainability—Case Studies in Quito, Ecuador
by Marco Briceño-León, Dennys Pazmiño-Quishpe, Jean-Michel Clairand and Guillermo Escrivá-Escrivá
Sustainability 2021, 13(9), 5209; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13095209 - 07 May 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3459
Abstract
This paper evaluates the energy efficiency in the bakery industry toward competitiveness and sustainability through energy audits that were carried out on six bakeries located in Quito, Ecuador. Firstly, an initial meeting was held. After this, an energy survey was carried out in [...] Read more.
This paper evaluates the energy efficiency in the bakery industry toward competitiveness and sustainability through energy audits that were carried out on six bakeries located in Quito, Ecuador. Firstly, an initial meeting was held. After this, an energy survey was carried out in all areas of the bakeries. The information of the energy consumption of the facilities was collected. This was based on electricity bills, power data, equipment usage time, habits, and monthly consumption. With the energy balances, the critical points were identified, resulting in the baking process and the production activity, as those with the highest energy consumption within each establishment. Subsequently, with the indicator of electrical energy consumed per unit produced, the energy consumption by production processes and the bakery’s total energy consumption were determined. Several improvement proposals were generated for the bakery industry based on the results. Finally, it is concluded that the consumption of electrical energy in the bakery industry in Quito is efficient when compared to other bakeries, since they use less energy per unit of mass processed to produce products. Full article
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