An estimation of life cycle exergy consumption of energy-intensive microclimate conditioning systems

This paper represents the estimation of life cycle exergy consumption for building engineering systems. The investigation explores public building engineering systems, which are the most energy-intensive. These include heating, ventilating, cooling (air conditioning) and lightning. For this investigation of systems, the typical up-to-date design solutions have been chosen, which enable to evaluate the quantitative ratio between the materials used and building's size. The exergy consumption analysis is divided into three parts: systems production, operating & maintenance and decommissioning. The differences between them consist of the variable degree of exergy demand and consumption intensiveness. The exergy demand for a system's installation is estimated by calculating the exergy consumption so as to produce separate elements of the system. Exergy demand for a system's operating is estimated by quantifying the real energy consumption and by taking into account the consumption for preventive maintenance. In this investigation of building engineering systems 4 typical buildings are explored for the city of Vilnius' conditions in Lithuania. The building's sizes vary from 1,200 to 19,500 m(2).