Summer is here, and facilities managers face a common struggle trying to meet ventilation requirements, keep indoor spaces comfortable, and not break the bank doing either.

Managers have to be able to address the challenge of dehumidifying outdoor air in an energy-efficient manner without over-cooling the space itself. In commercial facilities, dedicated outdoor air systems (DOAS) have become a go-to ventilation solution for handling high-percentage outside air requirements. They can condition large volumes of outside air without causing excess humidity, something that traditional packaged rooftop units can struggle to accomplish.

Meeting the Challenge

Modine has designed its Model MPR Packaged DOAS to overcome these challenges. The units have the capacity and capability to efficiently supply required volumes of fresh outside air to meet ventilation requirements for occupied spaces. The outside air can be properly heated, cooled, dehumidified, and filtered to meet the most stringent specifications, in widely varying climatic conditions. 

To reduce the inherent cost of tempering vast quantities of outdoor air, Modine engineers have designed energy recovery ventilation options that allow the units to recapture energy from exhaust air. The options use total (enthalpy) energy recovery wheels to use recover energy from the exhaust air stream to pre-condition the outside air, reducing the burden on the mechanical heating and cooling systems.   These options also include an economizer bypass damper to allow the unit to conserve fan energy during economizer mode.

Looking Ahead

The demand for increased ventilation and improved indoor air quality (IAQ) for commercial facilities is going to continue to become more popular and be demanded by customers that understand the importance of ventilation on the health of the building occupants. Demand for DOAS units to meet these needs in an energy efficient way will continue to grow. Modine remains dedicated to continual improvement of its commercial HVAC technology in order to meet evolving standards for ventilation and heating and cooling.