A new adaptive air handling system controller

Modern heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems commonly employ the concept of “Central AU-Air System” utilising Air Handling Units (AHU’s) and Variable Air Volume (VAV) boxes for energy conservation. Thus, a good controller for the AHU’s is extremely desirable. In this paper a simulation model for a standard air-handling system is presented, A new controller based on the modem adaptive control algorithms has been developed where the input and actuating variables ate incorporated into a system identification model which can predict the new system status hosed on past records and suggest the optimal control actions, Its performance has been shown to be superior to that of a conventional proportional-integral-differential (PID) controller in at least three aspects: adaptation to system change, response rate and energy conservation. © 1994 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.