In this research, the effects of flow rate and temperature of supply air on the performance of a bed-based task/ambient air conditioning system (TAC) have been investigated. For this reason, a bed-based task/ambient air conditioning system including a bed, a supply air inlet on the top of the occupant's head and a return air outlet under the bed have been considered and for the mentioned conditions, the equations of flow, energy and thermal comfort have been solved by OpenFoam numerical solver. Also, the thermal comfort conditions, local thermal discomfort and energy utilization coefficient have been evaluated in the present study. The results show that the performance of the mentioned system significantly depends on the supply air temperature and flow rate. So that, the low supply air flow rates may cause non-uniform temperature and velocity distributions and this leads to unpleasant thermal comfort conditions. Also, in order to achieve the benefits of TAC systems, using of high supply air flow rates must be avoided because in high flow rates a wide area of the room is affected by supply air instead of the bed zone. Also, the results indicate that the energy utilization coefficient decreases with supply air flow rate increment. Therefore, this coefficient has reached to less than 1.5 in 120 lit/s air flow rate that demonstrate the low advantage of using TAC systems in high supply air flow rates.

Keywords: Task/ambient air conditioning system, Thermal Comfort, sleep conditions, energy utilization coefficient

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