Prediction of on-coil temperature of condensers installed at tall building re-entrant

Split-type air-conditioners that serve an apartment building often have the outdoor condensing units installed at the building re-entrants. Heat energy released by the condensing units induces a hot air plume which has its temperature increase all along the path up the building. When the plume reaches the upper floors, its elevated temperature degrades the condenser efficiency and may even interrupt the air-conditioner operation because of high-temperature cut. At the design stage, air-conditioning practitioners often find it very difficult to analyse the condenser performance when working in a cluster. The work requires the expertise of using an air flow simulation/computation tool to predict the condenser on-coil temperatures. This article presents a modelling/computation technique to tackle this problem. An application example is quoted to demonstrate the practicability of the approach.