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While indoor air quality has always been a primary goal for HVAC system designs, the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, and the resulting pandemic has made it a top priority in order to safely occupy our hospitals, offices, and academic institutions. There have been many discussions on mitigation strategies to reduce virus transmission, including mechanical upgrades and some unconventional technologies. Codes and standards are expected to evolve to incorporate many of these strategies, while also maintaining aggressive energy use reduction targets. The existing building commissioning process is a useful tool to identify opportunities for improving indoor air quality and potential energy conservation measures as well as confirm new equipment and technologies are installed and performing as intended when implemented. The following paper will present the process and results of a campus wide effort conducted at a large community college in New York State. Following the recommendations of the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force, an engineering study analyzed ventilation and occupancy based on Center for Disease Controls (CDC) and ASHRAE 62.1 minimum ventilation guidelines for each building. While considering the recommendations for improving ventilation rates, the campus effort further established the energy use baseline, analyzed the impact of HVAC upgrades, and identified improvements in performance of existing equipment through ASHRAE Level II energy audits and retro-commissioning. This presentation will allow attendees to understand how an owner or facility manager can use commissioning to move on from the pandemic and build back better in the post-COVID era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current generation of building energy codes was born in the 1970s and 1980s, amidst a backdrop of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo and the perception of limited worldwide energy resources. The intent of energy codes has been rooted in conservation of resources. Several factors including global climate change and the shale gas revolution have changed the picture fundamentally. It now has become critical that energy codes must reduce carbon emissions from the buildings sector. This paper follows upon a recently published paper examining how climate policy now impacts energy code policy. A variety of drivers, including greenhouse gas emission goals, regulation, market forces, and new technologies, is changing the relationship between buildings and the grid. As this relationship evolves, it is increasingly important to find metrics that enable useful and clear comparisons at the national level, while remaining regionally relevant. Similarly, it is increasingly important to move beyond annual metrics and find a way to consider hourly or other granular time scale impacts. Some leading jurisdictions, including California and New York, are currently working to resolve these issues; this paper includes an examination of those ongoing efforts. By encouraging building designers to consider hourly and regional building-grid implications, these metrics can support more distributed generation integration and reduced carbon impacts. This provides a benefit to the building and also enables the building to support the grid. Through updating the code basis metrics for buildings, model energy codes can play an important role in achieving jurisdictional carbon goals. This paper lays out new metric terms for model energy codes to move beyond their current basis and better align with current and future priorities, including consideration of the impacts and mechanics of those metrics. The authors provide specific recommendations concerning model code basis options, metrics, and mechanics; consider technical challenges to implementation and some potential solutions; and discuss first-order impacts that these code basis considerations may have on building design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are in the precommercial stages of development, and limited field testing and demonstrations have been performed to date. This paper provides an overview of the Department of Defense (DOD) Residential PEM Fuel Cell Demonstration Program, as well as an in-depth case study of the ten PEM fuel cells installed at a military facility in New York as part of this program. The installation, operation, performance, and benefits of these units are presented in this paper, along with lessons learned from the demonstration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New York City Transit (NYCT) has established a new design train fire heat release rate to be used in all the capital projects. Having relied in the past on simplified computer modeling and different set of material properties, NYCT has used in-house expertise with an advanced computer modeling technique and fire model to derive a more credible and realistic design value. Since the early 1990's, NYCT has used 14MW for the trains, but through the use of CFD and new train material information, NYCT has established that a 5MW fire is more credible and appropriate design fire scenario. This paper presents excerpts from the report that describes the analysis carried out by NYCT, and focuses on the scenario considered as the design basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines smoke control and occupant evacuation in WTC 1 and WTC 2 on September 11, 2001, focusing on the impact region and above for each tower. Approximately 2,000 individuals were at or above the area of impact in WTC 1 and WTC 2 who did not successfully evacuate. NIST found that the smoke management (smoke purge) systems in WTC 1 and WTC 2 were not initiated on September 11, 2001. Had the smoke purge sequence (required by the BCNYC for post-fire smoke venting) been initiated in WTC 1 or WTC 2, it is unlikely the system would have been capable of operation, due to damage caused by aircraft impacts. Even if fully operational, none of the hypothetical potential smoke management approaches evaluated would have prevented smoke spread given the damage caused by aircraft impact. During the events occurring on September 11, 2001, stair pressurization would have been ineffective in improving conditions for occupants trying to exit the building due to the extensive damage to the stair shafts. Installation of combination fire/smoke dampers in HVAC ductwork, which was not required in WTC 1 or WTC 2 at the time the WTC was constructed, may have acted to slow the development of hazardous conditions on the uppermost floors of the building, but would likely not have had a significant effect on the ability of occupants to egress the building due to the impassibility of the exit stairways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]