This article was published in ASHRAE Journal, May 2012.

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AHU Condensate Collection Economics

U
By Thomas Lawrence, Ph.D., P.E., Member ASHRAE; Jason Perry, Associate Member ASHRAE; Tyler Alsen, Student Member ASHRAE

A Study of 47 U.S. Cities

sing recycled or reclaimed water systems is a regular part of the urban infrastructure in some regions of the world. In areas that

are normally thought of as humid or at least not as water-stressed, recent concerns about water availability due to population growth or shifting climate are opening up a much larger market for water reclaim and reuse in the built environment.
To avoid confusion, the term condensate collection in this article refers strictly to the capture and reuse of cooling coil condensate from air-conditioning systems, and does not include the very different process of collecting condensate in steam systems for reuse. This water source is being increasingly recognized as a valuable resource, particularly in warm-humid or hot-humid climate zones. The overall intent here is to apply recent techniques in evaluating conden18 ASHRAE Journal

sate collection potential and reuse to see if easy to apply generalizations can be made regarding where condensate collection would be recommended or perhaps even mandated. The use of reclaimed water sources such as condensate collection is one strategy for reducing overall potable water consumption. ASHRAE and the International Code Council (ICC) have programs developed for green building construction. ASHRAE released its Standard 189.12009 in January 2010,1 while the ICC

has just published its International Green Construction Code, or IgCC.2 Both Standard 189.1 and the IgCC require the use of condensate collection and reuse for new construction and major renovation projects. However, limited guidance is found in the literature concerning where and when mandating condensate collection would be recommended. In some climates, the amount of condensate expected is practically zero, so requiring a condensate collection system would not be as practical or recommended. The primary motivation for this study was to develop and present a method for predicting the amount of condensate and making recommenAbout the Authors
Thomas Lawrence, Ph.D., P.E., is senior public service associate in the Faculty of Engineering, Jason Perry is research engineer at the Engineering Outreach Service, and Tyler Alsen is a graduate student, at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga.

a s h r a e . o r g

May 2012

dations on when condensate collection should be considered mandatory.

Prior Studies
Several attempts to estimate condensate have been previously published. A typical hourly condensate production rate was reported by Guz3 for buildings in San Antonio, Texas, of between 0.1 and 0.3 gallons of water per ton of cooling (0.11 and 0.32 L per kW of cooling), or approximately 0.5 gallons/hour per 1,000 ft2 of conditioned oor space (2.0 L/hour per 100 m of conditioned oor space). At these rates of collection, condensate recovery systems were determined to be nancially viable for buildings in excess of 100,000 ft2 (9300 m). While this provides a useful guide- Figure 1: Location of cities studied. line for areas with a climate similar to San Antonio, it is not readily applicable to other areas and Selection of Cities and Weather Data Parameters climates. A set of 47 cities in the United States was selected for this Bryant and Ahmed4 reported in 2008 a simplied model based study, with these shown on the map in Figure 1. Although on empirical data from a case study in Qatar, predicting con- this study only looked at cities in the U.S., developing corredensate generation for a normal commercial air-conditioning lations between the amount of condensate and weather data system to be 8 gallons of condensate per ton of cooling (8.6 L parameters allows the results and conclusions to be appliper kW of cooling) for each day with a dew-point temperature cable anywhere. The rst step toward this goal is to check in excess of 60F (15.5C). Painter5 reported a methodology if correlations can be derived for the amount of condensate to predict condensate production from dedicated outdoor air- collected with respect to readily available weather data pahandling units with energy recovery systems for buildings in rameters. This list of weather data parameters used in the Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, Texas, comparing the differ- correlation study, and the descriptive abbreviations reference in humidity ratio across the system cooling coils. enced in this paper, are given in Table 1. The values for all Lawrence, et al.,6 developed a method for evaluating the but one of these parameters were taken from one source, the amount of condensate collected from a typical air-handling unit ASHRAE HandbookFundamentals,9 while average annual based on the amount of incoming outdoor air and its temperature dew point was computed from the Typical Meteorological and relative humidity. This method predicts the collected con- Year (TMY3) data.10 densate using hourly weather data for when mechanical cooling would be expected, and accounts for the potential of using econo- Condensate Prediction Regression Study mizer cooling when that would make sense. The method was valThe amount of condensate collected annually was deidated using data collected from a eld study during the cooling termined for each site using a methodology developed season of 2009.7 The method predicts the volume of condensate and veried using eld site data collected during an entire annually collected from a unit volume ow of incoming outdoor cooling season.7 It would be ideal if a prediction method air. Application of this method to the varied climatic conditions of for the amount of condensate could be characterized with the U.S. was described in Lawrence and Perry.8 only a few parameters. Multivariate linear regression equation correlations were therefore developed using various Methodology combinations of the weather data parameters. The initial This study approached the topic of condensate collection regression was done using all weather data parameters, and with three specic purposes. The rst was to develop a meth- then subsequent modications made to evaluate using seod to characterize the total annual amount of condensate col- lected groups of the parameters, steadily reducing the numlected using correlations with local weather data parameters. ber of parameters in each regression step of the evaluation Next, was to evaluate the economics associated with a typical study. The combinations selected were based on factors that condensate collection system. Finally, these results would be should strongly inuence the amount of condensate, such analyzed for generalizations regarding regions where con- as humidity levels and the amount of time mechanical cooldensate collection would be recommended from an economic ing is required (as opposed to free cooling using air or and/or environmental impact perspective. water-side economizers).
May 2012 ASHRAE Journal 19

From reviewing plots of the correlations developed during this study, it became apparent that the cities in very dry regions that have a low amount of condensate were inuencing the results such that the correlations were not as accurate as they could be for cities that have a higher amount of condensate expected. Therefore, for the nal step in this regression study, the regression was performed with the nine cities removed that have very low amounts of condensate expected. This improved the overall correlation equation t for the remaining cities, and further discussion on this issue is given in the results section.

Parameter Annual Average Dew Point Cooling Degree Days (Based on calculation of daily average temperature difference from a dened point 65F) 1% Cooling Design Point Dry Bulb Temperature 1% Cooling Design Point Mean Coincident Wet Bulb Temperature 1% Cooling Design Point Humidity Ratio 0.4% Dehumidication Design Point Dew Point 0.4% Dehumidication Design Point Humidity Ratio 0.4% Dehumidication Design Point Mean Coincident Dry Bulb 0.4% Evaporation Design Point Wet Bulb 0.4% Evaporation Design Point Mean Coincident Dry Bulb Total Annual Rainfall Total Rainfall During Cooling Season, Dened as April 1 Through Oct. 31

Abbreviation Avg. DP CDD DB MCWB HR Cooling DP Dehumd HR Dehumid MCDB Dehumid WB Evap MCDB Evap Total Rainfall

Units F

F F lbw/lba F lbw/lba F F F inches

Economic Analysis

This study determined the simple payAprilOct Rain inches back period for a condensate collection system expected to capture a low, me- Table 1: Weather data parameters used in correlation study. dium and high amount of condensate. The amount collected is a function of the amount of incom- sump into a small collection basin and then pumps that water ing outdoor air, since that is the primary source of additional to a simple method of reuse, such as back into the basin of a moisture (ignoring minor additions from the occupants and chiller cooling tower. A fairly robust and simple system for other activities such as cooking). For the purposes of this installation has been veried by implementation in approxistudy, we considered typical low, medium and high amounts mately 10 retrot applications the past few years, and further of incoming outdoor ventilation air, which were assumed to details on this design are contained in Reference 6. These probe 1,000, 5,000 and 20,000 cfm (500, 2500 and 10 000 L/s), vide the basis for the condensate system cost in this study. respectively. The outdoor airow rates are values assumed A key to the economic viability of condensate collection is for one individual air-handling unit, or a situation where two the water rate charged by the local water utility. Specic and or more units are located in close enough proximity to effec- reliable cost data for the combined water/sewer rates could tively have their condensate ow combined. A high level of not be identied for two of the 47 cities used in this study, and outdoor airow could be the result of either a large volume these were left out of the economic evaluations (but not the air-handling unit, or a unit with smaller supply air capacity regression correlation study). but with a large fraction of the total ow being outdoor air, such as with a dedicated outdoor air supply unit. The eco- Results nomic analysis results presented in this paper were results Condensate Prediction and Correlation Studies from the high level of outdoor airow and based on the asThe condensate prediction correlation study results are sumption that this ventilation airow occurred continuously summarized in Table 2. This evaluation process worked to24 hours per day. ward one key goal of this study: that being a derivation of a This analysis did not account for the effect of including a simple to use correlation equation of the amount of condenventilation energy recovery system that includes latent en- sate collected annually for a steady unit value of incoming ergy recovery. Thus, the amount of condensate and resulting outdoor airow. economic benets would need to be adjusted to account for The p-value statistics were used to help guide the decithe latent recovery effectiveness of the unit. Similarly, adjust- sions on which parameters to select for reducing the number ments should be made for systems that have variable outdoor of parameters in the next regression step. This process resulted air intake. in determining that the three best parameters are the average The cost of a condensate collection system will vary de- dew point (Avg. DP), cooling degree days (CDD), and the pending on such items as: whether storage was planned and if April through October cooling season rainfall. The correlathat storage system also included other water sources such as tion equation is given below, and the resulting predictions are rainwater; the intended reuse(s) for the water; and how much plotted in Figure 2. associated processing of the water is required before reuse. For the purposes of this comparative study, we assumed a Condensate (gal/cfm) = 0.4777 Avg. DP + 0.00204 (1) simple system that drains the air-handling unit condensate CDD + 0.32596 [April Through Oct. Rainfall] 22.50
20 ASHRAE Journal a s h r a e . o r g May 2012

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Regression Step 1 All Parameters Included Avg. Dew Point CDD DB MCWB HRCooling DPDehumid HRDehumid MCDBDehumid WBEvap MCDBEvap Total Rainfall AprilOctober Rainfall Resulting r X X X X X X X X X X X X 0.9698

Regression Step 2 Seven Best Parameters Included X X p-value 2.14E-05 5.09E-09

Regression Step 3 Four Best Parameters Included X X p-value 3.89E-12 1.19E-11

Regression Step 4 Three Best Parameters Included X X

Regression Step 5 Three Best No Low Cities Included X X

X X

6.23E-01 8.25E-02

X X X 0.9529

1.07E-01 7.77E-03 4.72E-07 X X 0.9473 6.01E-06 1.02E-14 X 0.9136 X 0.9489

Table 2: Summary of correlation study results.

Economic Study Results

An interesting point noted during this study was that the cost of water to the end consumer (residential or commercial) in the study cities is not dependent on the amount of locally available water supplies, as determined by the annual rainfall amounts. This is illustrated in Figure 3, which plots the combined water and sewer rates ($1,000/gallons) versus average annual total precipitation. This has the effect of blurring the economic evaluation results from being simply how much condensate water is collected to also the need to consider local water utility rates, since they cannot be predicted by local availability in terms of rainfall. The economic payback depends on both the amount of water collected as well as the local cost of water, so the water cost
Predicted Condensate (gallon/cfm Outdoor Airflow)
35 r2=0.9489 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

variations in some cases magnied or somewhat skewed the expected results. For the case of a high amount of incoming outdoor airow, the simple payback for the various cities ranged between 1.0 and 1,430 years, and a plot of these results is given in Figure 4, ignoring the two cities with payback periods exceeding 1,000 years. The variability in the data from the straight line is due to differences in water cost at each site. Approximately 18 of the study cities could be characterized as being obvious localities for requiring, or at least strongly considering, application of condensate collection systems. These cities are identied as the First Tier. All but one of these cities had simple payback periods of nine years or less for the high outdoor airow case, with the one exception

Cost of Water/Sewer Service Combined

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Honolulu

($/1,000 gallons)

Actual Condensate (gallon/cfm Outdoor Airflow)

Average Annual Rainfall (in.)

Figure 2 (left): Regression equation prediction results. Figure 3 (right): Water cost at study cities compared to annual local rainfall.
22 ASHRAE Journal a s h r a e . o r g May 2012

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being a locality (Omaha, Neb.) that has very low water rates as of the latest information available. Being that this city has a fairly high potential for capturing condensate, it is categorized with the First Tier set of localities. Each of these cities has a predicted annual amount of condensate collected of at least 7 gallons of water per cfm of outdoor air (50 liters water per L/s of outdoor air). Another nine cities are considered to be marginal for consideration (the Second Tier). In these locations, the nal decision on an individual building project should be based on site-specic factors, such as the ease of reuse of the collected water and the building owners preferences to incorporate more sustainable design aspects in their project. Each of these cities has a predicted annual amount of condensate collected of greater than 3 but less than 7 gallons of water per cfm of outdoor air (25 but less than 50 liters of water per L/s of outdoor air). The remaining cities would not be recommended for condensate collection based strictly on an economic evaluation, although again this technology could be considered on a case-by-case basis. The location of these tiers of cities on a map of the U.S. is given in Figure 5.

1,000

Simple Economic Payback (years)

Not Recommended Second Tier First Tier

100

10

1 0.01

3 gal/cfm 7 gal/cfm 0.1 1 10

Annual Condensate Collected (gallons/cfm Outdoor Airflow)

Figure 4: Simple economic payback study results.

Results Summary
Table 3 summarizes, for each city studied, the amount of condensate collected from the weather prediction model, the amount predicted by the regression Equation 1, the cost of water used in the analysis, and the simple economic payback based on the weather prediction model for the representative case study evaluation.

Discussion

Figure 5: Locations of recommended and second tier cities for condensate collection The correlation study was successful based on simple economic analysis. in the development of a simple regression equation to predict the amount of condensate expected of Honolulu, the regression equation signicantly underat a given locality using readily available weather and cli- predicted the amount of condensate collected. This would matic data parameters within a fairly high condence level. be one suggested area for further study, although these locaEven though the regression study and results were based tions would be expected to be obvious choices for condenstrictly on data for U.S. cities, the science involved knows sate collection systems. Several avenues are also suggested for future research in the no political boundaries, and thus these results could be applied with condence to other countries and regions of technical and public policy areas. One would be to investigate the world. The regression equation had better success pre- methods for expanding the predicted amount of condensate dicting the amount of condensate for the two cities in sub- from a xed incoming outdoor ventilation airow rate to one tropical Florida (Orlando and Miami), than for the purely that includes variable amounts of outdoor airow, or also situtropical city of Honolulu. The specic cause of this trend in ations where latent energy recovery systems are used in addipotentially under-predicting tropical locations is unknown tion to the condensate collection. These cases would represent situations with the inclusion of demand-controlled ventilation, at this time. We recommend the extension of this correlation study to systems that do not operate continuously (such as shutdown regions with even more extensive amounts of expected con- during unoccupied hours), and systems that include energy redensate, such as pure tropical climates. Although the U.S. covery using enthalpy wheels or similar devices. Other avenues for suggested research include looking at includes areas with a hot-humid climate, all but one (Honolulu) are technically considered subtropical. In the case this issue from the public policy angle. For example, when
24 ASHRAE Journal a s h r a e . o r g May 2012

Location

Weather Data Predicted gal/cfm OA

Regression Equation Predicted gal/cfm OA * 13.9 3.3 * 5.1 4.6 12.4 6.1 5.5 16.5 * 6.5 4.9 1.9 * 4.6 20.2 11.2 * 5.9 15.1 31.9 2.4

Cost of Water ($/1,000 gal) $6.51 $7.57 $9.36 $4.05 $3.85 $14.21 $13.86 $8.49 $3.73 $7.43 $5.24 $4.26 $6.41 $6.25 $14.71 $3.31 $6.01 $5.71 $3.31 $6.34 $2.66 $10.75 $8.00

Simple Payback Period (Years) 70 3.3 10.8 355 4.5 5.0 3.4 14.2 6.8 4.0 139 5.7

Location

Weather Data Predicted gal/cfm OA

Regression Equation Predicted gal/cfm OA 24.0 9.0 12.2 7.9 26.2 7.3 4.1 * * 3.4 * 17.1 4.9 1.7 2.5 1.6 * 2.4 * 9.5 6.4 10.9 10.0

Cost of Water ($/1,000 gal) $7.35 $9.04 $5.50 $2.27 $4.82 $6.77 $5.05 $7.01 $6.37 $11.47 $6.21 $3.63 $10.23 $12.10 $10.84 $17.49 $17.35 $8.11 $7.42 $4.68 $5.15 $6.27 $9.21

Simple Payback Period (Years) 1.9 4.4 5.8 15.4 2.6 18.0 35.9 30.4 72.0 16.0 333 4.8 4.4 22.2 16.8 14.5 25.4 8.5 1113 8.8 9.9 4.7 3.7

Albuquerque, NM Athens, GA Bangor, ME Billings, MT Boston, MA Burbank, CA Charlotte, NC Chicago, IL Columbus, OH Dallas, TX Denver, CO Des Moines, IA Detroit, MI El Paso, TX Fairbanks, AK Fresno, CA Honolulu, HI Knoxville, TN Las Vegas, NV Lubbock, TX Memphis, TN Miami, FL Minneapolis, MN

0.7 13.3 3.3 0.2 0.06 5.1 4.7 11.4 6.2 6.5 16.0 0.6 5.7 2.7 0.2 1.7 25.7 10.9 0.6 5.0 13.3 31.4 4.6

New Orleans New York, NY Oklahoma City, OK Omaha, NE Orlando, FL Phoenix, AZ Portland, OR Rapid City, SD Redmond, OR Sacramento, CA Salt Lake City San Antonio San Diego, CA

24.0 8.4 10.3 9.5 26.4 2.7 1.8 1.6 0.7 1.8 0.2 19.0 7.3 1.2 1.8 1.3 0.8 4.8 0.04 8.0 6.5 11.2 9.8

9.0 19.7 98 60 2.1 5.3 182 10.5 9.3 1.0 8.9

San Francisco San Jose, CA San Luis Obispo, CA Seattle, WA Sioux Falls, SD Spokane, WA St Louis, MO Syracuse, NY Topeka , KS Washington, DC

Table 3: Summary of study results by city (*cities not included in final regression). would it make sense for a locality or region to mandate the inclusion of condensate collection for new building construction or major renovations? Factors such as the availability of fresh water locally, the pricing for delivered potable water supplies and the general local design standards and acceptance of water reuse systems would likely be a big part of this type of study.
an institutional building in Doha, Qatar: an opportunity for water sustainability. Proceedings of the Sixteenth Symposium on Improving Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates. 5. Painter, F.L. 2009. Condensate harvesting from large dedicated outside air-handling units with heat recovery. ASHRAE Transactions 115(2):573580. 6. Lawrence, T.M., J. Perry and P. Dempsey. 2010. Capturing Condensate by Retrof itting AHUs. ASHRAE Journal 52(1):4854. 7. Lawrence, T.M., J. Perry and P. Dempsey. 2010. Predicting condensate from HVAC air handling units. ASHRAE Transactions 116(2):315. 8. Lawrence, T.M., and J. Perry. 2010. Capturing Condensate. High Performing Buildings 3(4):5661. 9. 2009 ASHRAE HandbookFundamentals. 10. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 2008. National Solar Radiation Data Base. TMY3 data download.http://tinyurl.com/bup5csr. Accessed June 8, 2011. ASHRAE Journal 25

References
1. ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1-2009, Standard for the Design of High Performance Green Buildings. www.ashrae.org/ greenstandard. 2. International Code Council. 2012. International Green Construction Code. http://tinyurl.com/72cppv4. 3. Guz, K. 2005. Sustainability: Condensate Water Recovery. ASHRAE Journal 47(6):5456. 4. Bryant, J.A., T. Ahmed. 2008. Condensate water collection for May 2012