SINGAPORE – A water-repellent coating for air-conditioners’ cooling coils which could help to reduce energy consumption will be trialled at South Beach Tower, a hotel, office and residential complex in Beach Road.
Air-conditioning can account for about half of total energy usage in such buildings, and the authority is supporting research and innovation solutions that enhance the efficiency of cooling, it added. This leads to the cooling coils being less efficient, as well as dust accumulation and micro-organism growth, affecting the quality of cooled air and increasing maintenance cost.
Research was conducted by NTU, air-conditioning contractor Powen Engineering, South Beach Consortium and OCBC Property Services. It added that current monitoring systems that accurately measure and verify the efficacy of airside systems are costly to install, but the toolkit that will be trialled is “cost effective”.