Air Curtain Infiltration for Warehouse
Air Curtain Infiltration for Warehouse
(OP)
Hi, has anyone seen hard data on infiltration through an industrial air curtain?
I'm looking at heated Wing and Berner models in the range of 500k-700k BTU/hr for large roll-up doors. My application is a warehouse where there is a 12' x 12' rollup on the west side and two 10' x 10' truck bays on the east side that will be open all the time. Customer specified that doors will remain open; can't close them due to too much traffic. We're figuring prevailing W-E winds of 15 mph. We are also heating the space with unit heaters in the same HWS loop. The building is a metal pre-engineered type structure with insulation.
Now that I've described my room, here's the questions:
What type of infiltration (due to doors only) can I expect with this scenario?
ASHRAE mentions 60%-80% efficiency for air doors. Is there a better way of calculating my Qinf than using 30% of the wind volume at outside temperature?
-Thanks-
I'm looking at heated Wing and Berner models in the range of 500k-700k BTU/hr for large roll-up doors. My application is a warehouse where there is a 12' x 12' rollup on the west side and two 10' x 10' truck bays on the east side that will be open all the time. Customer specified that doors will remain open; can't close them due to too much traffic. We're figuring prevailing W-E winds of 15 mph. We are also heating the space with unit heaters in the same HWS loop. The building is a metal pre-engineered type structure with insulation.
Now that I've described my room, here's the questions:
What type of infiltration (due to doors only) can I expect with this scenario?
ASHRAE mentions 60%-80% efficiency for air doors. Is there a better way of calculating my Qinf than using 30% of the wind volume at outside temperature?
-Thanks-





RE: Air Curtain Infiltration for Warehouse
Here's what you need to do.
1. Find out how much air mechanically comes into the whole building (via minum outside air at AHUs, make-up AH or HV units, etc).
2. Find out how much air leaves the building (via un-returned exhaust, all systems, including toilets, task exhaust, etc.).
3. Hire an air balancer to very accurately determine 1 and 2 during normal building operation.
3. Scope out that the balancer must make 1 higher than 2 by at least 10%. This may involve fan sheave adjustment.
Then, the answers to your questions are:
1. None, assuming no-wind conditions, and
2. Yes, you just did it. There will be very little or no infiltration under normal conditions, and minimal under windy conditions.
Regards,
CB