Assessing Energy Performance of HVAC Systems within a Railway Infrastructure Environment

With the rapid development of railway transport in the UK over the last decade, energy consumption and carbon emission from heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems within a railway infrastructure environment has surged massively. This is fundamentally due to large floor areas, operation times, increased occupation and quality of services and plant equipment. Existing research on this topic focuses mainly on the integration of a single HVAC system for a chosen station. However, due to the complex configuration of a rail infrastructure environment, it is crucial to investigate how different HVAC systems perform within specific rooms, with a special focus on critical spaces within the station. This paper therefore aimed to evaluate the dedicated HVAC systems in association with emerging technologies and sustainable strategies that can be applied to specific spaces (including Retails and critical spaces such as Stations Operations Room, Comms Equipment Room, and Electrical Switch Room) within a station building in Manchester (UK). A key focus of the paper was to analyse and compare the energy efficiency of different types of the selected plant and assess the achievable energy saving due to the type of HVAC systems that was utilised for a specific space within the environment. Based on the results, it was found that Air Handling Unit (AHU) supplied by air source heat pump (ASHP) being configured for the regularly occupied spaces such as retails can implement energy efficiency, while the presence of south-facing window could lead to a significant increase of thermal loads for such spaces. It was also found that ASHP configured with Close Control Units (CCU) can be an energy efficient HVAC solution for both the Stations Operations Room and the Comms Equipment Room, while a Direct Expansion (DX) cooling system with outdoor condenser unit can achieve energy efficiency for the Electrical Switch Room.