How to provide no outdoor air except for free-cooling?

I'm trying to simulate an air loop in Openstudio 2.7 that recirculate indoor air, but use outdoor air only when economizer is ON.

The HVAC system provides air for offices (picture 1).

The problem is the air loop provides continuously an outdoor air flow rate (picture 3) whenever economizer is not always ON (picture 2).

Is there a way to set outdoor air flow rate to zero when economizer is not ON?

Picture 4 provides information about ControllerOutdoorAir.

Maximum flow rate allowed has been hard sized
No schedule for Fraction for outdoor air was applied.

Picture 1 shows the actual air loop.

image description

Picture 2 shows the air economizer status ON.

image description

Picture 3 shows the outdoor air mass flow rate for the air loop.

image description

Picture 4 ControllerOutdoorAir parameters

image description

329

BORM

asked 2019-04-04 10:50:43 -0500, updated 2019-04-04 14:31:03 -0500

edit flag offensive 0 remove flag close merge delete

Comments

What are the ControllerOutdoorAir object's settings?

MatthewSteen (2019-04-04 13:55:59 -0500) edit

It has been updated in the question.

BORM (2019-04-04 14:29:25 -0500) edit

add a comment see more comments

1 Answer

Sort by

oldest

newest

most voted

See the documentation for the Controller:OutdoorAir object, which outlines the order that OA limits are applied (excerpt below). In your case, I think setting the Minimum Outdoor Air Schedule Name field to always 0 is the solution (first bullet), which should be overridden by the economizer (second bullet).

There are various minimum and maximum limits on the outdoor air flow rate which are applied in the following order. Limits that fall later in the list can override earlier limits.

OA flow rate = Minimum Outdoor Air Flow Rate * Minimum Outdoor Air Schedule
Apply economizer controls
OA flow rate ≥ Controller:MechanicalVentilation OA flow rate
OA flow rate ≥ System exhaust flow rate
(OA flow rate)/(Current mixed air flow rate) ≥ Minimum Fraction of Outdoor Air Schedule
(OA flow rate)/(Current mixed air flow rate) ≤ Maximum Fraction of Outdoor Air Schedule (even if this reduces the OA flow rate, can override all minimums and economizer)
OA flow rate ≤ Maximum Outdoor Air Flow Rate
Apply OA flow rate specified by demand limiting
Apply OA flow rate specified by EMS
OA flow rate ≤ Current mixed air flow rate (system flow rate)