One of the important components of a nuclear fuel cycle facility is a hot cell. Hot cells are engineered robust structures and barriers, which are used to handle radioactive materials and to keep workers, public, and the environment safe from radioactive materials. To provide a confinement function for these hot cells, it is necessary to maintain the soundness of the physical structure, but also to maintain the negative pressure inside the hot cell using the operation of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. The negative pressure inside the hot cells allows air to enter from outside hot cells and limits the leakage of any contaminant or radioactive material within the hot cell to the outside. Thus, the HVAC system is one of the major components for maintaining this negative pressure in the hot cell. However, as the facility ages, all the components of the hot cell HVAC system are also subject to age-related deterioration, which can cause an unexpected failure of some parts. The abnormal operating condition from the failure results in the increase of facility downtime and the decrease in operating efficiency. Although some major parts are considered and constructed in redundancy and diversity aspects, an unexpected failure and abnormal operating condition could result in reduction of public acceptance and reliability to the facility. With the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution, prognostics and health management (PHM) technology is advancing at a rapid pace. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Siemens, and other companies have already developed technologies to constantly monitor the integrity of power plants and are applying the technology in the form of digital twins for efficiency and safety of their facility operation. The main point of PHM, based on this study, is to monitor changes and variations of soundness and safety of the operation and equipment to analyze current conditions and to ultimately predict the precursors of unexpected failures in advance. Through PHM, it would be possible to establish a maintenance plan before the failure occurs and to perform predictive maintenance rather than corrective maintenance after failures of any component. Therefore, it is of importance to select appropriate diagnostic techniques to monitor and to diagnose the condition of major components using the constant examination and investigation of the PHM technology. In this study, diagnostic techniques are investigated for monitoring of HVAC and discussed for application of PHM into nuclear fuel cycle facilities with hot cells.

In the nuclear fuel cycle (NFC) facilities, the failure of Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system starts with minor component failures and can escalate to affecting the entire system, ultimately resulting in radiological consequences to workers. In the field of air-conditioning and refrigerating engineering, the fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) of HVAC systems have been studied since faults occurring in improper routine operations and poor preventive maintenance of HVAC systems result in excessive energy consumption. This paper aims to provide a systematic review of existing FDD methods for HVAC systems therefore explore its potential application in nuclear field. For this goal, typical faults and FDD methods are investigated. The commonly occurring faults of HVAC are identified through various literature including publications from International Energy Agency (IEA) and American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). However, most literature does not explicitly addresses anomalies related to pressure, even though in nuclear facilities, abnormal pressure condition need to be carefully managed, particularly for maintaining radiological contamination differently within each zone. To build simulation model for FDD, the whole-building energy system modeling is needed because HVAC systems are major contributors to the whole building’s energy and thermal comfort, keeping the desired environment for occupants and other purposes. The whole-building energy modeling can be grouped into three categories: physics-based modeling (i.e., white-box models), hybrid modeling (i.e., grey-box models), and data-driven modeling (i.e., black-box models). To create a white-box FDD model, specialized tools such as EnergyPlus for modeling can be used. The EnergyPlus is open source program developed by US-DOE, and features heat balance calculation, enabling the dynamic simulation in transient state by heat balance calculation. The physics based modeling has the advantage of explaining clear cause-and-effect relationships between inputs and outputs based on heat and mass transfer equations, while creating accurate models requires time and effort. Creating a black-box FDD model requires a sufficient quantity and diverse types of operational data for machine learning. Since operation data for HVAC systems in existing nuclear cycle facilities are not fully available, so efforts to establish a monitoring system enabling the collection, storage, and management of sensor data indicating the status of HVAC systems and buildings should be prioritized. Once operational data are available, well-known machine learning methods such as linear regression, support vector machines, random forests, artificial neural networks, and recurrent neural networks (RNNs) can be used to classify and diagnose failures. The challenge with black-box models is the lack of access to failure data from operating facilities. To address this, one can consider developing black-box models using reference failure data provided by IEA or ASHRAE. Given the unavailability of operation data from the operating NFC facilities, there is a need for a short to medium-term plan for the development of a physics-based FDD model. Additionally, the development of a monitoring system to gather useful operation data is essential, which could serve both as a means to validate the physics-based model and as a potential foundation for building data-driven model in the long term.

In nuclear power plant (NPP) decommissioning, ventilation and purification of the building atmosphere are important to create a working environment, ensure worker safety, and prevent the release of gaseous radioactive materials into the environment. The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system of each building is maintained, modified, or newly installed. In this study, based on APR1400, operation strategies were presented in case of ventilation abnormalities in the reactor containment building (RCB), where highly radioactive particles and high dust are most frequently generated during NPP decommissioning. For research, it was assumed that the entire RCB atmospheric ventilation during decommissioning would use the RCB purge system of the existing NPP and perform continuous ventilation. Additionally, it is assumed that areas where high radiation particles and high dust occur locally, such as reactor containers or internal segments, are sealed with tents and purified using a HEFA filter of a temporary portable HVAC, and a exhaust flow path is connected to the discharge duct of the existing RCB purge system. The possibility of abnormal occurrence was largely divided into two cases. First, when large amounts of uncontrolled pollutants are released into the atmosphere inside the RCB, discharge to the environment is stopped manually or automatically by a modified engineered safety function activation signal (ESFAS). Afterwards, the RCB purge system should be operated in recirculation mode to sufficiently purify the RCB atmosphere with a HEPA filter. Second, when the first train of the low volume purge system is not running due to a failure, standby train should be operated. If both low volume purge trains fail, a high volume purge system is used. Intermittent purge operation is preferred due to large capacity during high volume purge operation. In cases where it is not possible to operate all purge systems due to common issues such as power supply, atmospheric sampling is performed to determine whether to proceed with the work inside RCB.

Plasma melting technology is a high-temperature flame of about 1,600°C or higher generated using electrical arc phenomena such as lightning, and radioactive waste generated during the operation and dismantling of nuclear power plants is not classified according to physical characteristics. It is a technology that can meet waste disposal requirements through treatment and reduction. Plasma torch melting technology was used for volume reduction and stable treatment of HVAC filters generated from nuclear power plants HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning). filter was treated by placing 1 to 3 EA in a drum and injecting it into a plasma melting furnace at 1,500°C, and the facility was operated without abnormal stop. A total of 132.5 kg of filter was treated, and the high-temperature melt was normally discharged four times. It was confirmed that the plasma torch melting facility operates stably at 500 LPM of nitrogen and 370-450 A of current during filter treatment. Through this study, the possibility of plasma treatment of filters generated at nuclear power plants has been confirmed, and it is expected that stable disposal will be possible in the future.

In this paper, a numerical study was conducted on the development of HVAC(Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning) performance required for a large-scale greenhouse. In order to increase the simulation efficiency, fan model, porous media, and radiator model, etc. provided by Fluent were used based on the part performance analysis such as blowing fans and PTC heaters. Developed simulation method was applied to the decision of fan position to secure the flow uniformity and the determination of the heater specification to maintain the temperature suitable for plant growth. This study is the first step for the development of integrated environmental control system of greenhouse for high-income crop cultivation and the simulation method will be revised after correlation test.

When compact HVAC is applied to a building, various variables exist in performing the functions of air conditioning, ventilation, and hot water supply of the building, and various experimental and empirical evaluations according to the energy performance evaluation method of the building occur. We are going to present research data for preparing domestic evaluation standards for energy evaluation methods for compact HVAC and zero-energy buildings to be applied in the future.

This study is empirically intended to look into the effects of HVAC management on condensation cause and prevention in indoor swimming pools. The findings are summarized as follows. First, the experience of condensation in indoor swimming pools showed that 132 out of 142 people in total experienced the condensation in indoor swimming pools, which they had a high experience rate of 92.3%. For the location of condensation, the wall joints were 46.8% and the windows were 34.5%, which a total of 72.3% occurred in the wall joints and windows. Second, the effect of construction design, HVAC management and building construction on the cause of condensation in indoor swimming pools showed that building construction had an effect on the cause and location of condensation depending on the seasonal time, partially adopting hypothesis 1. Third, the effect of condensation-causing factors on condensation-preventing factors in indoor swimming pools showed that condensation had a close relationship with air and temperature conditions depending on the time and location of condensation, adopting hypothesis 2. As for the above-stated findings, the HVAC management in indoor swimming pools is an important concern factor that continues to cause condensation despite the development of advanced construction materials. Especially, building construction is a main factor that has a direct effect on condensation in the HVAC management of facilities. This implies that the window management is important in maintaining the wall joints - which can suppress the selective use and defect occurrence of construction materials - or confined spaces for a long time.

This study investigated the odor-associated bacterial community in automobile HVAC systems. Through a metagenome analysis, it was found that; Massilia (42.426%), Sphingomonas (28.200%), (10.780%), and Methylobacterium (5.756%) were abundant in the HVAC systems. Massilia can cause the biodegradation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) producing odor in automobiles. Sphingomonas produces volatile halogenated compounds or degrades organic pollutants. Rhodococcus is reported to produce sulfur compounds which give off an odor similar to rotting eggs and cabbages. Methylobacterium is one of the most representative bacteria that causes odor in automobile HVAC systems. The evaporator is considered as the appropriate habitat for microorganisms in automobiles because of its high humidity and organic adsorption. Massilia, Sphingomonas, Rhodococcus, Methylobacterium, Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Arthrobacter, Micrococcus, and Pseudomonas, listed in order from most to least present, were isolated as abundant bacteria in the evaporator of the HVAC systems.

The Automobile HVAC system is a habitat for odor-associated fungal communities. We investigated the odorassociated fungal community in an automobile HVAC system using a high-throughput DNA sequencing method. The fungal community structure was evaluated via metagenome analysis. At the phylum level, Ascomycota and Basidiomycota were detected, accounting for 43.41% and 56.49% of the fungal community in the HVAC system, respectively. Columnosphaeria (8.31%), Didymella (5.60%), Davidiella (5.50%), Microxyphium (4.24%), unclassified Pleosporales (2.90%), and Cladosporium (2.79%) were abundant at phylum of Ascomycota and Christiansenia (36.72%), Rhodotorula (10.48%), and Sporidiobolus (2.34%) were abundant at phylum of Basidiomycota. A total of 22 genera of fungi were isolated and identified from the evaporators of the HVAC systems which support fungal growth and biofilm formation. Among them, Cladosporium, Penicillium, Aspergillus and Alternaria are the most representative odor-associated fungi in HVAC systems. They were reported to form biofilm on the surface of HVAC systems with other bacteria by hypha. In addition, they produce various mVOCs such as 3-methyl-1-butanol, acetic acid, butanoic acid, and methyl isobutyl ketone. Our findings may be useful for extending the understanding of odor-associated fungal communities in automobile HVAC systems.

In this research, the heat and flow analysis in a condenser of vehicle HVAC system was investigated numerically regarding the different shapes of the condenser tube. The velocity, pressure, and temperature distribution of the test fluid(R-134A) inside the tube were numerically calculated for the optimum design of the condenser tube for two different length with four different inlet velocities. In addition, the local pressure and temperature distributions for total tube length were calculated and the variation of pressure drop of the R-134A with flow rate were also calculated numerically. The tube at case 1 with less curved elbows was determined for the better design than case 2 in the aspect of energy-effective shape of the condenser tube.