Omar Soliman

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a newly discovered coronavirus. The best way to prevent and slow down transmission is being well informed about the COVID-19 virus, the disease it causes and how it spreads. According to the WHO (World Health Organization), “The COVID-19 virus spreads primarily through droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose when an infected person coughs or sneezes”. Talking and breathing can also release droplets and particles. Droplets generally fall to the ground or other surfaces in about 1m, while particles, behave more like a gas and can travel through the air for longer distances, where they can transmit to people and also settle on surfaces. The virus can be picked up by hands that touch contaminated surfaces (called fomite transmission) or be re-entrained into the air when disturbed on surfaces. However, other mechanisms of virus dissemination are likely to be more significant: direct person to person contact indirect contact through inanimate objects like doorknobs through the hands to mucous membranes such as those in the nose, mouth and eyes droplets and possibly particles spread between people in close proximity Figure 1: COVID-19 transmission routes For this reason, basic principles of social distancing (1 to 2m), surface cleaning and disinfection, handwashing and other strategies of good hygiene are far more important than anything related to the HVAC system. This is a “game” of chance, and the fewer individuals who come in close contact with each other, the lower the possibility for the disease to be spread. Since symptoms do not become apparent for days or weeks, each of us must behave as though we are infected. Practical recommendations for building services operation: For those building which remain open or will re-open in the next few weeks, there are some non-HVAC actions is required to be made: Increase disinfection of frequently touched surfaces. Install more hand sanitation dispensers, assuming they can be procured. Shut down food preparation and warming areas, including the office pantry or coffee station. Close or post warning signs at water fountains in favor of bottle filling stations and sinks, or even better, encourage employees to bring their water from home. Once these basics are covered, a few actions related to HVAC systems are suggested, in case some spread of the virus can be affected, according to the guidance published by ASHRAE (American Society for Heating, Ventilation & Air-conditioning Engineers) and REHVA (The Federation of European Heating, Ventilation & Air-conditioning Association), There are some suggested precautions that can be taken into consideration during building operating hours. These precautions include: Increase air supply and exhaust ventilation: For those buildings which use mechanical ventilation system, increase the outdoor fresh air to be supplied (air change per hour) to the building would be helpful, if the ventilation is to reach 24/7 is much better and demand control ventilation (DCV) should be disabled, in addition lowering the population inside the building will cause in effective dilution ventilation per person. Also during spring time in which there is a limited requirement of cooling needs indoors, ventilation system can operate with increased rate of air supply during the whole building work periods without facing the problem of high energy consumption. Exhaust ventilation systems of toilets should always be kept in duty on 24/7, and under-pressure must be insured, especially to avoid the faecal-oral transmission. Use more window-driven natural ventilation: For those buildings that don’t have installed mechanical ventilation systems, the use of openable windows is recommended, even if this causes thermal discomfort. Open windows in toilets with passive stack or mechanical exhaust systems may cause contaminated airflow from the toilet to other rooms so, in these circumstances, it is recommended that toilet windows remain shut. If there is no adequate exhaust ventilation from toilets, and window airflow cannot be avoided, keep windows open in other spaces to achieve crossflows through buildings. Figure 2: Natural ventilation through building windows Safe use of heat-recovery devices: Heat-recovery devices may carry over the virus attached to particles from the exhaust airside to the supply airside via leaks. In rotary heat exchangers (including enthalpy wheels) particles deposit on the return airside of the heat exchanger surface, after which they might be re-suspended when the heat exchanger turns to the supply airside. Based on current evidence, it is recommended to turn rotary heat exchangers off temporarily during these circumstances. Its document goes on to state: if leaks are suspected in the heat-recovery sections, pressure adjustment or bypassing can be an option to avoid a situation where higher pressure on the extract side causes air leakages to the supply side. Transmission via heat-recovery devices is not an issue when a HVAC system is equipped with a run-around coil or other heat-recovery device that guarantees air separation between return and supply side. No Use of Recirculation: Virus particles in return ducts can also re-enter a building when centralized air handling units are equipped with recirculation sectors. It is highly recommended to avoid central recirculation. In case this leads to problems with cooling or heating capacity, this has to be accepted because it is more important to prevent contamination and protect public health than to guarantee thermal comfort. Air Filtration: Filtration in building heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems can be a part of an overall risk mitigation approach but is not generally regarded as a solution by itself. We do know that low-efficiency filters (less than MERV 8 according to ASHRAE Standard 52.2 or less than ePM2.5 20% according to ISO 16890-1:2016) are very unlikely to make a difference. Improve central air filtration to the MERV-1311 or the highest compatible with the filter rack, and seal edges of the filter to limit bypass. Use of UV Lamps: A properly designed and maintained UV system, often in concert with filtration, humidity control, and airflow management, has been shown to reduce infections from other viruses. However, the details of the system are very important. Simply adding UV to an existing system without consideration of

The coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19, has become a serious health concern across the globe. With a rising infection and mortality rate, people are taking steps to protect themselves from exposure in whatever way they can. The size of COVID-19 is approximately 0.125 microns, so it requires special type of air filtration to be trapped or eliminated in order to protect the indoor air from being contaminated by ventilators. HEPA filter (High Efficiency Particulate Air) is one of the most well-known filters used for air purification and contaminants removal. High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters are the primary technology used for particulate removal in individual and collective protection applications. HEPA filters are commonly thought to be impenetrable, but in fact they are only 99.97% efficient at collecting the most-penetrating particles (approx. 0.3 micrometer) which means that it may trap the virus but it will not be eliminated or destroyed. Ultraviolet germicidal lamps can also be used in ventilator for the sake of eliminating bacterial and virus contamination from the supplied air. Broad-spectrum UV light kills viruses and bacteria, and it is currently used to decontaminate surgical equipment. it can also be used in units supplying air to public areas, that would be a safe and efficient method for limiting the transmission and spread of airborne microbial diseases. SABIANA Air handling units offer a wide range of air filters that would protect the indoor air from being contaminated and helps sufficiently with infection control process.

Data center industry is rapidly growing, with ever greater focus on faster connections and increasing uptime. Cloud data center traffic will grow every year, and the need for greater online storage will drive server capacities higher and higher. The worldwide energy consumption of data centers increased nearly 56 % between 2005 and 2010, and reached 237 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2010, accounting for about 1.3% of the world’s electricity usage [1]. Cooling systems (primarily air conditioners) in data centers account for a large part of this energy consumption: in 2009, about 40% of the energy consumed by data centers was for cooling purposes [2,3]. Cooling Equipment: A common cooling method for data centers is the use of computer room air-conditioners (CRAC), these units have several configurations: Aisle Coolers: which supply cold air to the IT equipment racks through a raised floor. The air flows across the IT equipment and then removes dissipated heat from the back of the rack. In order to avoid mixing hot and cold air, and thus reduce the cooling efficiency, the typical practice is to arrange alternating rack rows of “hot aisles” and “cold aisles.” Since hot air is lighter than cold air, the hot exhaust air from the IT equipment rises and recirculates into the CRAC, where it is cooled and supplied into the racks again. In-rack coolers: In-Rack is the most precise cooling available, as the rack and the air conditioner operate in a closed relationship with one another. Cold air has no choice but to pass through the servers; hot air has no choice but to pass through the heat exchanger. The airflow paths are small, requiring less fan energy. In addition, the exhaust air is captured at its hottest point, maximizing the temperature difference on the cooling coil. Highly Efficient Cooling Systems: Cooling systems consumes roughly 40 % of the overall energy consumption in data centers, so there are a lot of opportunities to reduce the power by using energy saving cooling systems. [4] Data centers usually have a tendency to overcool to prevent equipment downtime and maintain an operating environment of about 20 °C and 50 % RH. There are some “smart” or “adaptive” cooling solutions that allow for dynamic modification of the data center cooling air flow and temperature set points based on heat load monitoring throughout the data center. These methods save excess energy consumption due to overcooling and also prevent the formation of hot spots. [5][6] Free Air Cooling (FAC): Free air cooling (FAC) is one of the simple and most promising methods to reduce the energy consumption for cooling. FAC uses air outside data centers to cool equipment directly (under prescribed temperature and humidity levels). When the outside air is cooler than the return air, an airside economizer exhausts the hot return air and replaces it with cooler, filtered outside air, essentially “opening the windows” to cool the data center equipment. To solve the indoor air quality problem of the aforementioned system, heat exchangers can be added between the indoor and outdoor airs. Therein, rotating wheels are widely used. The following schematic gives the principle of rotating wheel heat exchangers where the wheel keeps rotating at a speed of 10-12 RPM and the airs flows into different paths to avoid mixing. Then the indoor air flows back to the data center for space cooling after heat exchange whereas the heated outdoor air is exhausted. So in order to guarantee a reliable refrigeration system, electrical cooling equipment is often integrated with the rotating wheel heat exchanger. FAC has been investigated by companies including Intel, Google, Microsoft, and Vodafone. Intel conducted a 10-month test to evaluate the impact of using only outside air via FAC to cool a high-density data center in New Mexico 2007. The center had 900 heavily utilized production servers. In this test, the system provided 100 % air exchange with a temperature variation in the supply air from 18 °C to more than 32 °C, no humidity control (4–90 % RH), and minimal air filtration. The results showed that about $2.87 million (a 67 % savings in total energy costs) was saved by the new cooling method. [7] Water Free Cooling (WFC): the main difference between water-based free cooling system and traditional air conditioning system is that a heat exchanger is installed in parallel with electrical chiller to make full use of free cooling capacities using cooling tower or underground water to exchange heat with the water used to cool the data center. In other words, according to climatic conditions (especially the wet bulb temperature), the whole system can work under three different modes: (a) when the outdoor temperature is low (winter), the cooling water can be used to produce chilled water directly through the heat exchanger and the chiller can be turned off, so that the system works under “free cooling” mode; (b) when the outdoor temperature is high (summer), the chiller is activated instead while the cooling tower is only used to handle the condensation heat, so that the system works under “electrical cooling” mode; (c) when the outdoor temperature is moderate (spring and fall), the chiller and heat exchanger work together in parallel, so the system works under “free cooling + electrical cooling” mode. Therefore, the working conditions of the water-based free cooling system are greatly impacted by the ambient temperature variation. [8] References: [1] J.G. Koomey, Growth in data center electricity use 2005 to 2010 (Analytics Press, Oakland, 2011). [2] A. Almoli, A. Thompson, N. Kapur, J. Summers, H. Thompson, G. Hannah, Computational fluid dynamic investigation of liquid rack cooling in data centres, Appl. Energy (2012). [3] P. Johnson, T. Marker, Data center energy efficiency product profile, Pitt & Sherry, Report to equipment energy efficiency committee (E3) of The Australian Government Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (2009). [4] A. Bar-Cohen, B.A. Srivastava, B. Shi, Thermo-Electrical Co-Design of 3D ICs: Challenges and Opportunities. Computational Thermal Science (2013). [5] A. Bar-Cohen, J.J. Maurer, J.G. Felbinger, Keynote Lecture, “DARPA’s

I still remember my first day after graduation when I joined Shaker consultancy group; which was ranked the first Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing (MEP) consultant in Egypt in the year 2001. Their main office was in Mohandseen. At the time, Mohandseen was an upper-class district, most of its residents were the crème de la crème of the Egyptian society; it was the community of politicians, ministers, and artists. We created designs for Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning systems (HVAC) for all the significant projects in Egypt near the Nile river, like The Four Seasons hotels and Nile City.  One of the biggest projects I participated in was The American University in Cairo which is currently located in The Fifth Settlement district. In 2001, nobody lived in The Fifth Settlement, it was literally a desert, and in the time of 18 years, it turned into one of the most distinguished places in Cairo, to work, to study, and to live. In 2008, I worked for Dar Alhandasah in Dubai. Now, in 2018 Dubai is another city. Its buildings and towers tell us the story of “How to build a city from scratch.” Every building around the world tells its own story; however, I am always inspired by the stories of the technologies inside these buildings. I always dream of the buildings of tomorrow; their places, what they’re made of, and the story each building would tell the future generations. Four years ago, I decided to follow my passion and start my own business; a company that works on buildings’ technologies and solutions. Today I’m developing my business model to introduce an advanced version that could take this industry to its highest levels. I believe that that could be achieved through raising the standards of buildings’ technologies, being energy efficient and smarter than before. I am here today to lunch our new company Zuidas Technologies; an innovative integrated energy efficient solution to develop livable, energy efficient, and smart commercial buildings, and a turnkey solution provider from the basis of design till operation. Our core purpose is to create healthier working, living, and learning environments by using top-notch technologies. From this perspective, we extend our boundaries and keep innovating continuously to develop a new generation of buildings. With a group of experts and professionals, we are establishing a new baseline for energy efficient buildings, using a new project delivery methodology to save up to 50% of the energy normally consumed. Meeting the 50% energy savings goal is challenging, and according to the Advanced Energy Design Guides of Office Buildings written by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, it requires essential principles: 1- Obtain building owner buy-in.  There must be a strong buy-in from the owner and the operator’s leadership and staff. The more they know about and participate in the planning and design process, the better they will be able to achieve the 50% energy saving goal. The building owner must set his goals and provide the guidance required to turn his vision into a reality. 2- Assemble an experienced, innovative design team. Interest and experience in designing energy-efficient buildings, innovative thinking, and the ability to work together as a team is critical to meeting the 50% goal. The team achieves this goal by creating a building that maximizes daylighting; minimizes process, heating, and cooling loads; and has highly efficient lighting and HVAC systems. Energy goals should be communicated in the request for proposal and design team selection based in part on the team’s ability to meet the goals. The design team implements the goals for the owner. 3- Adopt an integrated design process.  Cost-effective, energy-efficient design requires trade-offs among potential energy-saving features. This requires an integrated approach to building design. A highly efficient lighting system, for instance, may cost more than a conventional one, but because it produces less heat, the building’s cooling system can often be downsized. The greater the energy savings, the more complicated the trade-offs become and the more design team members must work together to determine the optimal mix of energy saving features. Because many options are available, the design team will have wide latitude in making energy-saving trade-offs. 4- Consider a daylighting consultant. Daylighting is an important energy savings strategy to achieve the 50% energy saving goal; however, it requires good technical daylighting design. If the design team does not have experience with a well-balanced daylighting design, it may need to add a daylighting consultant. 5- Consider energy modeling. This Guide provides a few design packages to help achieve energy savings of 50% without energy modeling, but whole-building energy modeling programs can provide more flexibility to evaluate the energy-efficient measures on an individual project. These simulation programs have learning curves of varying difficulty, but energy modeling for office design is highly encouraged and is considered necessary for achieving energy savings of 50%. Part of the key to energy savings is using the simulations to make envelope decisions first and then evaluating heating, cooling, and lighting systems. Developing HVAC load calculations is not energy modeling and is not a substitute for energy modeling. 6- Use building commissioning. Studies verify that building systems, no matter how carefully designed, are often improperly installed or set up and do not operate as efficiently as expected. The 50% goal can best be achieved through building commissioning (Cx), a systematic process of ensuring that all building systems—including envelope, lighting, and HVAC—perform as intended. 7- Train building users and operations staff. Staff training can be part of the building Cx process, but a plan must be in place to train staff for the life of the building to meet energy savings goals. The building’s designers and contractors normally are not responsible for the office after it becomes operational, so the building owner must establish a continuous training program that helps occupants and operation and maintenance staff maintain and operate the building for maximum energy efficiency. This training should include information about the impact of plug loads on energy use and the importance of using energy-efficient

Over the last two decades, hypermarkets were introduced to the Egyptian market proving themselves to be the perfect one-stop shop to buy all your family’s needs, whether its groceries, home appliances, or even children toys. The secret to hypermarkets success in Egypt is down to one factor. Hypermarkets provide the lowest retail prices since they have the largest economies of scale. Meaning they can buy a product from a manufacturer directly in large volumes obtaining a low price per unit. The number of hypermarkets is increasing every year. Even commercially isolated regions like Upper Egypt are starting to join the trend. Last year, the first hypermarket was opened in Upper Egypt, Asyut. The project is funded by a Saudi Arabian investment group and its planning on opening a total of 15 branches all over Upper Egypt. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been all that great for hypermarkets. The devaluation of the Egyptian pound leads to a significant increase in prices of most products sold, meaning the purchasing power of their clients has decreased. This sudden change is affecting the total profits for hypermarket owners, and they are desperately looking for different ways to compensate for the losses. One limitation to hypermarkets is their huge size. They consume large amounts of energy for HVAC and lighting. In addition, the recent economic reforms lead to an increase in electricity and gas prices. As a result, new branches designs are taking into consideration energy efficiency, and owners are motivated to invest heavily in energy efficient equipment. Since HVAC consumes 70% of commercial buildings’ energy consumption, it has become a priority for energy savings. Let’s look at a study done by 365 Ecology on  Hypermarket branch in the North Coast . This study compares how VRF will perform compared to the package system which is currently used by other branches. it has a 1400 m2 ground floor for sales, and a 420 m2 basement for administrative purposes. The following graph estimates the total running + initial costs of using LG Multi V vs a traditional package system.  It is clear VRF will save millions of pounds over the lifecycle of the project. The amount of money saved could allow Hypermarket series to limit the increase of their products prices, this way they remain ahead of their competition and they don’t lose their clients purchasing power. One of 365 Ecology’s current clients is Hyper Market. the market is a Saudi based grocery retail company specialized in supermarkets and hypermarkets. it is founded Saudi Arabia’s first ever hypermarket in 1978 in Riyadh. They own 470 stores in Saudi Arabia and UAE and recently decided to expand in Egypt as part of their regional dominance strategy. The first Egyptian branch was opened in 2015 in 6th October. The second branch was opened in the Fifth Settlement as a two-floored store in a tower. The store’s estimated power consumption expenses were LE 600,000 per month. the engineering management contacted 365 Ecology asking for a solution to reduce power consumption. 365 Ecology studied the HVAC system in use and recommended switching to LG Multi V VRF to reduce the store’s total energy consumption by 30% and HVAC consumption by 50%. the consultants reviewed and approved of the final design, and the project is currently under construction. VRF is the most energy efficient HVAC system for hypermarkets since their cooling capacities fall under the VRF range, which studies show to be from 40 – 500 RT. Also, hypermarkets require individual cooling zones, as they sell a variety of products that require different temperatures and humidity levels. For example, the dairy products section requires a lower temperature zone than the bakery section. Besides, hypermarkets have large open areas that may require AHUs to cover the large airflow rate, and VRF is compatible and operates optimally with AHUs. It is only a matter of time before hypermarkets engineering management discovers the importance of switching to VRF. The initial signs are already set in motion, and as commodity and electricity prices keep increasing, owners will make the switch faster than ever.