The Psych rometry of Air Conditioning Processes

The psychrometric chart

This provides a picture of the way in which the state of moist air alters as an air conditioning process takes place or a physical change occurs. Familiarity with the psychrometric chart is essential for a proper understanding of air conditioning.

Any point on the chart is termed a state point, the location of which, at a given barometric pressure, is fixed by any two of the psychrometric properties discussed in chapter 2. It is customary and convenient to design charts at a constant barometric pressure because barometric pressure does not alter greatly over much of the inhabited surface of the earth. When the barometric pressure is significantly different from the standard adopted for the chart or psychrometric tables to hand, then the required properties can be calculated using the equations derived earlier.

The British standard is that adopted by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers for their Tables of Psychrometric Data and for their psychrometric chart. It is

101.325 kPa. The American standard is also 101.325 kPa and this value is used by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers. It is also, incidentally, the value adopted by the Meteorological Office in Great Britain.

It is worth noting though, that there are a few differences of expression in the British and American charts. The most important of these is, of course, in the datum used for the enthalpy of dry air. Two other minor points of difference are that the American chart expresses the temperature of adiabatic saturation and specific humidity, whereas the British chart uses wet-bulb temperature (sling) and moisture content (which is the same as specific humidity).

The psychrometric chart published by the CIBSE uses two fundamental properties, mass and energy, in the form of moisture content and enthalpy, as co-ordinates. As a result, mixture states lie on the straight line which joins the state points of the two constituents. Lines of constant dry-bulb temperature are virtually straight but divergent, only the isotherm for 30°C being vertical. The reason for this is that to preserve the usual appearance of a psychrometric chart, in spite of choosing the two fundamental properties as co-ordinates, the co-ordinate axes are oblique, not rectangular. Hence, lines of constant enthalpy are both straight and parallel, as are lines of constant moisture content. Since both these properties are taken as linear, the lines of constant enthalpy are equally spaced as are, also, the lines of constant moisture content. This is not true of the lines of constant humid volume and constant wet-bulb temperature, which are slightly curved and divergent. Since their curvature is only slight in the region of practical use on the chart, they can be regarded as straight without significant error resulting. In the sketches of psychrometric charts used throughout this text to illustrate changes of state, only lines of percentage saturation are shown curved. All others are shown straight, and dry-bulb isotherms are shown as vertical, for convenience.

The chart also has a protractor which allows the value of the ratio of the sensible heat gain to the total heat gain to be plotted on the chart. This ratio is an indication of the slope of the room ratio line (see section 6.4) and is of value in determining the correct supply state of the air that must be delivered to a conditioned space. The zero value for the ratio is parallel to the isotherm for 30°C because the enthalpy of the added vapour depends on the temperature at which evaporation takes place, it being assumed that most of the latent heat gain to the air in a conditioned room is by evaporation from the skin of the occupants and that their skin surface temperature is about 30°C.

Figure 3.1 shows a state point on a psychrometric chart.

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