AIR CONDITIONING APPLICATIONS

Air conditioning engineers broadly divide air conditioning applications

into comfort and process.
Comfort applications aim to provide a building indoor environment that
remains relatively constant in a range preferred by humans despite
changes in external weather conditions or in internal heat loads.
Air conditioning makes deep plan building feasible, for otherwise they
would have to be built narrower or with light wells so that inner spaces
receive sufficient outdoor air via natural ventilation. Air conditioning also
allows buildings to be taller since wind speed increases significantly with
altitude making natural ventilation impractical for very tall buildings.
Comfort applications for various building types are quite different and
may be categorized as:
low-rise residential buildings, including single family houses,
duplexes, and small apartment buildings;
high-rise residential buildings, such as tall dormitories and apartment
blocks;
commercial buildings, which are built for commerce, including
offices, malls, shopping centers, restaurants, etc.;
institutional buildings, which include hospitals, governmental.
academic, and so on; and
industrial spaces where thermal comfort of workers is desired.
In addition to buildings, air conditioning can be used for many types of
transportation motor cars and other land vehicles, trains, ships, aircraft, and
spacecraft.
Process applications aim to provide a suitable environment for a process
being carried out, regardless of internal heat and humidity loads and
external weather conditions. Although often in the comfort range, it is the
needs of the process that determine conditions, not human preference.
Process applications include the following:
Hospital operating theaters, in which air is filtered to high levels to
reduce infection risks and the humidity controlled to limit patient
dehydration. Although temperatures are often in the comfort range,
some specialist procedures such as open heart surgery require low
temperatures (about 18C, 64F) and other such as neonatal relatively
high temperatures (about 28C, 82F).
Clean rooms for the production of integrated circuits,
pharmaceuticals, and the like, in which very high levels of air
cleanliness and control of temperature and humidity are required for
the success of the process.
Facilities for breeding laboratory animals since many animals
normally only reproduce in spring, holding them in rooms at which
conditions mirror spring all year can cause them to reproduce yearround.
Aircraft air conditioning although nominally aimed at providing
comfort for passengers and cooling of equipment, aircraft air
conditioning presents a special challenge because of the changing
density associated with changes in altitude, humidity and temperature
of the outside air.