Life Cycle Environmental Impact, Energy Performance, and Economic Cost-Effectiveness of Stratum Ventilation

Sustainable ventilation is a potential solution for addressing climate change and reducing carbon emissions. However, there is a need for a comprehensive analysis of their environmental impact, energy performance, and economic cost-effectiveness. Such assessments should consider the combined effects of life cycle cost (LCC) and carbon emissions during both the supply-and-installation phase and the operation phase. This chapter presents a systematic approach for estimating the environmental impact of ventilation systems, which includes energy demand and CO2 emissions throughout both phases. The approach is applied to a typical classroom setting, considering three ventilation systems: mixing ventilation, displacement ventilation, and stratum ventilation. The findings indicate that stratum ventilation exhibits the lowest environmental impact and life cycle cost among the three ventilation systems. Adopting displacement ventilation and stratum ventilation can lead to significant reductions in CO2 emissions, up to 23.25% and 31.71%, respectively, compared to mixing ventilation over a 20 year service period. Moreover, adopting displacement ventilation and stratum ventilation can result in cost savings, with reductions in life cycle costs of up to 15.52% and 23.89%, respectively, compared to mixing ventilation over the same service period.