A Review of High-Rise Ventilation for Energy Efficiency and Safety

With rapid economic growth, the number of high-rise buildings increases significantly due to land shortage in highly populated cities. Compared with other types of buildings, high-rise buildings have a higher cooling load and are more energy intensive, leading to huge cooling energy consumption and peak electricity demand. Ventilation has proved to be an effective approach to reduce cooling load and thereby save cooling-related energy and reduce peak electricity demand for high-rise buildings, which is important for achieving sustainable development of cities and society. Building safety is a challenge in high-rise ventilation. Fires and the resultant air pollution in high-rise buildings are often disastrous and cause huge losses if the high-rise ventilation system is not designed and operated well. This paper presents a review of previous studies on energy efficiency and building safety for high-rise ventilation, including natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation and hybrid ventilation. Statistical analysis was conducted on the research methods, number of literature review sources, and topics. The research gap was also discussed. Through the review, it was found that increasing research has been conducted on high-rise ventilation, especially on the topic of building safety. It was also recommended to consider both safety and energy simultaneously, in order to achieve energy efficiency and safety in high-rise ventilation and therefore to promote the application of ventilation in high-rise buildings.