Study on comparison and examination of different HVAC systems in the kitchen of centers providing school lunch.

The kitchens of school lunch provision centers (hereafter, KCs) usually have conventional mixing ventilation systems installed. Nevertheless, the indoor thermal environments in these centers are often not appropriate for workers because large amounts of sensible and latent heat are generated by the tilting type kettles used in the preparation of the lunches. When the airflow plumes above the kettles are disturbed by the ambient airflow, such as air jets caused by the air conditioning system, the thermal environment can become intolerable. This paper proposes an inlet cover system that can be easily utilized in existing KCs to improve the thermal environment in the occupied zone. The results of comparative computational fluid dynamics simulations conducted of HVAC systems (conventional and displacement) and the proposed system indicate that it improves the thermal environments in existing KCs that utilize conventional mixing ventilation systems while conserving energy.