Carrier Air Conditioning - Carrier completes 3000 unit fan coil test project

Carrier’s new specialist fan coil test laboratory, which was opened last year at its chiller manufacturing facility in France, and has been used by several of Carrier’s UK customers since opening, has just completed an unusually large fan coil test project.
Three thousand Carrier fan coil units will be installed later this year in the forty-two storey ‘Granite’ office tower development at La Défense in Paris, as part of the integrated Carrier six chiller based air conditioning installation. So demanding is the specification, that it is anticipated that the building will achieve certification of compliance to the HQE (“Haute Qualité Environnementale”, equivalent to the Energy Performance of Building Directive at the European level) delivered by the CSTB (Centre Scientifique et Technique du Batiment). In order to validate the equipment performance data of the required fan coil units, extensive testing was carried out at the Carrier laboratory.
The laboratory offers clients the facility to simulate exact room conditions in most building types. Developer NEXITY-SARI commissioned the four-month test on behalf of Société Générale, future owners of the 85,000m2 Tour Granite, and the developer, end-user, consulting engineers and installer all witnessed the tests at some point.
Several room conditions in the tower were reproduced precisely in the laboratory, including two ceiling heights, variable wall and floor dimensions, the main furniture, the customer’s lights and blinds, and the unusually high windows and very deep window recesses (0,9m) which radically affect the airflow in the room. As a result of the tests, Carrier has even influenced the design of the ceiling diffusers. Twenty-eight different office room configurations were validated, in both heating and cooling mode.
European norms accept a three degree variation in temperature gradients in the so called “occupied zone” of each office. However, with the improvements in airflow that resulted from the testing, there will be less than one degree variance from the floor up to 1.85m in the offices using the fan coil units and diffusers, customised and tested in this “state of the art” demonstration suite. Some room configurations also required the simulation of a two metre diameter central pillar, part of the building structure, while maintaining the temperature gradient and air velocity at the specified level (less than 0.2 m/s in the cooling mode).
The fan coils will operate in conjunction with a variable flow fresh air valve system controlled by CO2 sensors. Validation of the correct fresh air flow, dependent on the level of occupancy detected by the CO2 sensor, demonstrated that this new building will offer the ultimate level of comfort to the proposed 4800 occupants.

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