Active Chilled Beam (ACB) System, Solution with the Best Economic Life of High-Rise Buildings with High Thermal Mass and Low Cooling Capacity Load

There are many studies that compare conventional Air-Conditioning (AC) systems and Chilled Beam Systems (CBS) for commercial high-rise buildings based on two criteria which are capital and energy costs without compromising on comfort. Actually, using those two criteria is not sufficient to define the best AC system for a high-rise building with the highest economic efficiency during a certain operational life. Taking this into consideration, this paper intends to describe the difference between the Active Chilled Beam (ACB) and other AC systems and which has the highest economic efficiency during a certain life and the reason why. The main purpose of this study was to analyze the capital costs, the energy consumption, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), asset replacement and maintenance for the four possible mechanical systems required to implement in TID high-rise building of City of Tirana. During this study we have compared the properties of an ACB system, fan coils (FC), Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) system, and variable volume air volume (VAV) system. Based on the analyses and results of the study of property of four HVAC types of systems we came into conclusion that the energy consumption, asset replacement and maintenance have the most important cost in economic life of HVAC system. The capital cost of VAV and ACB system is higher than the capital cost of VRF and FC system, but the energy consumption, asset replacement and maintenance cost for economic life (25 years) are much lower for ACB system than for the other systems, which makes it the best system with an economic life of 25 years with a lower cost.