An investigation on the assessed thermal sensation and human body exergy consumption rate

The exergy concept helps to optimize indoor climate conditioning systems to meet the requirements of sustainable building design. While the exergy approach to design and operation of indoor climate conditioning systems is relatively well established, its exploitation in connection to human perception of the indoor environment is rare. As the building should provide healthy and comfortable environment for its occupants, it is reasonable to consider both the exergy flows in the building and within the human body. A relatively new approach of the relation between the exergy concept and the built-environment research has been explored in the present work. The relationship of subjectively assessed thermal sensation data, from earlier thermal comfort studies, to the calculated human-body exergy consumption has been analysed. The results show that the minimum human body exergy consumption rate was related to the thermal sensation votes close to thermal neutrality, tending to the slightly cool side.