Abdulraheem, S. (2021). Floor cooling project model for a residential building in the city of Vienna using ground water (free cooling) and refrigeration system (Chiller) [Master Thesis, Technische Universität Wien]. reposiTUm. https://doi.org/10.34726/hss.2021.91267
The cooling energy consumption takes up around 30–50% of the total consumption of data centers due to the inefficient cooling system and the necessity for it. Free cooling is an effective solution for reducing the power consumption of cooling systems. (H. Zhang, et al., July 2014 pp. 171-182) a Free cooling is defined as the means to store groundwater coolness or cool air, to supply indoor cooling during the day, which means to use passive cooling solutions. Notable progress has been made in this direction. However, many passive solutions are limited to new projects and sometimes this feature is insufficient to meet the needs of cooling loads. The research for this master thesis was conducted on such an example – a residential building in Vienna using groundwater (free cooling) with a refrigeration system (chiller) to cool the building by using floor cooling and fan coils distributor. The cooling requirement for this residential building is at 275 kWc, the free cooling capacity 59 kWc and the total capacity of chiller system is at 216 KWc.The free cooling was fairly ineffective due to the increased groundwater temperature in the last couple of years and the chiller (without free cooling with groundwater) with a maximum cooling capacity of 216 kWc, cannot meet the cooling requirements for floor cooling and fan coils with a total of 275 kWc cover, if the well cooling fails due to the high groundwater temperature. In this thesis, the free cooling with the design of the chiller system is explained in detail, followed by reasons for the defects and failure of free cooling. Furthermore, alternative variants are proposed for the model cooling system to improve the performance work of the chiller system. Finally, the investment cost and NPV of the model chiller system for a 20-year span is presented.