This study is to analyze the history of terminology used in the field of air conditioning and sanitation engineering in Japan over past 100 years. A quantitative text analysis of SHASE journals from the past 100 years was conducted. Text was extracted from image data by using optical character recognition (OCR). Nouns were extracted from text data by morphological analysis. By evaluating the characteristic words of each period with the Jaccard index and by calculating the appearance rate by age, the following was shown. 1) From around 1988, the subject of interest in this field shifted from a single "device" to a "system." At the same time, the word "environment" began to appear especially in architectural planning discussions. 2) The long-term trends of the appearance rates of "heating," "cooling," and "ventilation" are decreasing, unchanged, and increasing, respectively. 3) Among environmental issues, the appearance rate of "energy" is overwhelmingly large, and the present level is twice that at the time of the oil crisis. 4) Excluding the time of the "Sunshine project" and some other periods, the appearance rate of "solar cells" exceeds that of "solar heat". 5) The appearance rates of "history," "human behavior," and "human psychology," which are words related to the humanities and social sciences fields, increased for a while after the end of high economic growth and subsequently tailed off.

The energy consumption of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems accounts for a large proportion of the total energy used in office buildings. Therefore, the use of an energy recovery ventilator (ERV), which can recover sensible and latent heat, is considered one of the most effective energy reduction methods. In this study, we clarified the heat and moisture transfer mechanism in an energy recovery ventilator (ERV) unit and focused on the development of a simplified mathematical model for predicting the heat and mass (moisture) transfer coupled in ERV. Toward this end, after arranging the governing transport equations in ERV, we conducted fundamental experiments to measure the temperature, humidity, and enthalpy exchange efficiencies in the ERV unit. In the fundamental experiment, the temperature exchange efficiency, humidity exchange efficiency, and enthalpy exchange efficiency were measured as functions of air flow rate in a small heat-exchange element. The flow-rate dependence of temperature, humidity, and enthalpy exchange efficiency in the ERV unit were confirmed. Numerical analyses were also conducted in accordance with the experimental scenario, and the prediction results of numerical simulation with a simplified mass balance model (hygrothermal transfer model) were confirmed to be reasonably consistent with the experimental results under a hygroscopic condition.

This study investigates how some related factors of the air-conditioning system with ceiling induction diffusers effect on the indoor environment in the ward during the heating period. A series of experiments (10 cases) which are involved in two influential factors including the positions of exhausts and the conditions of curtains are carried out in a full scaled model room. The investigation aims to verify the trend and the degree of the influence of the relevant factors on the distributions of indoor temperature, contaminant concentration and the local mean age of air. The results show that the positions of the exhaust ducts play an important role on the normalized concentration distributions and have strong influence on the local mean age of air. Moreover, the barrier function of curtains to the contaminants is verified. There is a minor influence of curtains on the local mean age of air, though it can change the directions of the air flow.

To introduce effective safety measures and risk management/analysis/evaluation methods that can be used in future guidelines for safety education / training for building facilities, multifaceted analyses were carried out on the safety and accident conditions of building facilities by referring to official statistics and accident data of a specialized contractor. From the analyses, accident prevention methods are proposed in this report. In this paper, we extract the cause of occupational accidents in the building equipment field, identify the cause, and implement reduction measures. Further, such a concept of risk assessment has been emphasized even when writing safety work procedure manuals. However, issues related to quality are handled differently from safety. Safety and quality cannot be separated from the on-site work. Therefore, we investigate trouble and risk avoidance sheets in the construction of building facilities from the perspective of risk assessment and identify steps to tackle issues that can occur in the construction site. Moreover we summarize the process of creating the avoidance sheet, as well as the result of introducing the trouble and risk avoidance sheet building equipment to the construction site as a trial.

The visualization of energy use in HVAC systems has been attracted increasing interest in recent years owing to the proliferation of BEMS technology. It is important to carry out continuous commissioning of water thermal energy storage systems using daily operation data and feedback results to a daily operation from the perspective of energy conservation. To optimize the operational state of the water thermal storage system installed in a factory located in Gifu Pref., we practiced commissioning utilizing BEMS data after completion. The trial results of heat-source outlet temperature optimization during summer was reported in the previous report. In this report, a series of setting point optimizations focused on frost prevention control and the obtained results during winter are presented. As the excessive flow rate of frost prevention control for secondary systems during night deteriorates thermal storage properties such as heat source COP and stored thermal energy, we reduced it based on previous year’s operational results under the condition that heating and cooling water pipes don’t froze. Owing to a series of optimizations, the heat-source operation, temperature profile and stored thermal energy during night were improved compared to those before commissioning. Moreover the energy consumption of the heat-source system was reduced by up to 30% compared to that before commissioning.