MODERN APROACH TO MICROCLIMATE CONTROL ON BOARD SHIPS

Ambient and indoor air pollution have high impact on public health. Safety of indoor air is crucial for well-being and stress tolerance of seafarers due to their prolonged stay in the environment characterized by adjacency of work and leisure premises. Flaws in ventilation and air distribution systems may lead to infiltration and accumulation of pollutants in air of living and recreation premises. However, available onboard HVAC systems designs are not fit to ensure cleanliness and quality of the indoor air of ships accommodation. In this study a new approach for indoor air quality management on board merchant ships is proposed. Air quality standards and requirements analyzed and formal representation formulated. Approximation techniques for thermal comfort index PMV reviewed and computationally efficient polynomial representation proposed. Unified dynamic model of microclimate, thermal comfort and gas composition of air is developed. Model performance was studied in simulation environment with superstructure microclimate model of a real ship. As a proof of the hypothesis a preliminary prototype developed and tested on board of gas carrier vessel. A proposed control optimization problem statement allows implementation of a wide range of indoor air quality and comfort management systems at scale. Prototype multiparameter controller based on microprocessor technology showed potential of performance improvement and scalability for development of distributed control systems.