This article was published in ASHRAE Journal, May 2012.

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Footnote Symbols

*
A Study of 47 U.S. Cities
†
‡

AHU Condensate
Collection Economics
By Thomas Lawrence, Ph.D., P.E., Member ASHRAE; Jason Perry, Associate Member ASHRAE; Tyler Alsen, Student Member ASHRAE

U sing recycled or reclaimed water systems is a regular part of the

urban infrastructure in some regions of the world. In areas that
are normally thought of as “humid” or at least not as water-stressed,
has just published its International Green
Construction Code, or IgCC.2
Both Standard 189.1 and the IgCC
require the use of condensate collection
and reuse for new construction and ma-
jor renovation projects. However, lim-
recent concerns about water availability due to population growth or ited guidance is found in the literature
concerning where and when mandating
shifting climate are opening up a much larger market for water reclaim condensate collection would be recom-
mended. In some climates, the amount
and reuse in the built environment. of condensate expected is practically
To avoid confusion, the term “con- sate collection potential and reuse to zero, so requiring a condensate collec-
densate collection” in this article re- see if easy to apply generalizations can tion system would not be as practical or
fers strictly to the capture and reuse of be made regarding where condensate recommended. The primary motivation
cooling coil condensate from air-con- collection would be recommended or for this study was to develop and pres-
ditioning systems, and does not include perhaps even mandated. The use of re- ent a method for predicting the amount
the very different process of collecting claimed water sources such as conden- of condensate and making recommen-
condensate in steam systems for reuse. sate collection is one strategy for reduc-
This water source is being increasingly ing overall potable water consumption.
About the Authors
recognized as a valuable resource, par- ASHRAE and the International Code
Thomas Lawrence, Ph.D., P.E., is senior public
ticularly in warm-humid or hot-humid Council (ICC) have programs devel- service associate in the Faculty of Engineering, Ja-
climate zones. oped for green building construction. son Perry is research engineer at the Engineering
The overall intent here is to apply re- ASHRAE released its Standard 189.1- Outreach Service, and Tyler Alsen is a graduate
cent techniques in evaluating conden- 2009 in January 2010,1 while the ICC student, at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga.

18 ASHRAE Journal a s h r a e . o r g May 2012

dations on when condensate collection
should be considered mandatory.

Prior Studies
Several attempts to estimate conden-
sate have been previously published. A
typical hourly condensate production
rate was reported by Guz3 for buildings
in San Antonio, Texas, of between 0.1
and 0.3 gallons of water per ton of cool-
ing (0.11 and 0.32 L per kW of cool-
ing), or approximately 0.5 gallons/hour
per 1,000 ft2 of conditioned floor space
(2.0 L/hour per 100 m² of conditioned
floor space). At these rates of collec-
tion, condensate recovery systems were
determined to be financially viable for
buildings in excess of 100,000 ft2 (9300
m²). While this provides a useful guide- Figure 1: Location of cities studied.
line for areas with a climate similar to
San Antonio, it is not readily applicable to other areas and Selection of Cities and Weather Data Parameters
climates. A set of 47 cities in the United States was selected for this
Bryant and Ahmed4 reported in 2008 a simplified model based study, with these shown on the map in Figure 1. Although
on empirical data from a case study in Qatar, predicting con- this study only looked at cities in the U.S., developing corre-
densate generation for a “normal” commercial air-conditioning lations between the amount of condensate and weather data
system to be 8 gallons of condensate per ton of cooling (8.6 L parameters allows the results and conclusions to be appli-
per kW of cooling) for each day with a dew-point temperature cable anywhere. The first step toward this goal is to check
in excess of 60°F (15.5°C). Painter5 reported a methodology if correlations can be derived for the amount of condensate
to predict condensate production from dedicated outdoor air- collected with respect to readily available weather data pa-
handling units with energy recovery systems for buildings in rameters. This list of weather data parameters used in the
Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, Texas, comparing the differ- correlation study, and the descriptive abbreviations refer-
ence in humidity ratio across the system cooling coils. enced in this paper, are given in Table 1. The values for all
Lawrence, et al.,6 developed a method for evaluating the but one of these parameters were taken from one source, the
amount of condensate collected from a typical air-handling unit ASHRAE Handbook—Fundamentals,9 while average annual
based on the amount of incoming outdoor air and its temperature dew point was computed from the Typical Meteorological
and relative humidity. This method predicts the collected con- Year (TMY3) data.10
densate using hourly weather data for when mechanical cooling
would be expected, and accounts for the potential of using econo- Condensate Prediction Regression Study
mizer cooling when that would make sense. The method was val- The amount of condensate collected annually was de-
idated using data collected from a field study during the cooling termined for each site using a methodology developed
season of 2009.7 The method predicts the volume of condensate and verified using field site data collected during an entire
annually collected from a unit volume flow of incoming outdoor cooling season.7 It would be ideal if a prediction method
air. Application of this method to the varied climatic conditions of for the amount of condensate could be characterized with
the U.S. was described in Lawrence and Perry.8 only a few parameters. Multivariate linear regression equa-
tion correlations were therefore developed using various
Methodology combinations of the weather data parameters. The initial
This study approached the topic of condensate collection regression was done using all weather data parameters, and
with three specific purposes. The first was to develop a meth- then subsequent modifications made to evaluate using se-
od to characterize the total annual amount of condensate col- lected groups of the parameters, steadily reducing the num-
lected using correlations with local weather data parameters. ber of parameters in each regression step of the evaluation
Next, was to evaluate the economics associated with a typical study. The combinations selected were based on factors that
condensate collection system. Finally, these results would be should strongly influence the amount of condensate, such
analyzed for generalizations regarding regions where con- as humidity levels and the amount of time mechanical cool-
densate collection would be recommended from an economic ing is required (as opposed to “free cooling” using air or
and/or environmental impact perspective. water-side economizers).

May 2012 ASHRAE Journal 19

 From reviewing plots of the corre- Parameter Abbreviation Units
lations developed during this study, it
Annual Average Dew Point Avg. DP °F
became apparent that the cities in very
dry regions that have a low amount of Cooling Degree Days (Based on calculation of daily aver-
CDD
age temperature difference from a defined point 65°F)
condensate were influencing the results
such that the correlations were not as 1% Cooling Design Point – Dry Bulb Temperature DB °F
accurate as they could be for cities that 1% Cooling Design Point – Mean Coincident Wet Bulb
MCWB °F
have a higher amount of condensate ex- Temperature
pected. Therefore, for the final step in 1% Cooling Design Point – Humidity Ratio HR – Cooling lbw/lba
this regression study, the regression was 0.4% Dehumidification Design Point – Dew Point DP – Dehumd °F
performed with the nine cities removed 0.4% Dehumidification Design Point – Humidity Ratio HR – Dehumid lbw/lba
that have very low amounts of conden-
0.4% Dehumidification Design Point – Mean Coincident MCDB–
sate expected. This improved the overall °F
Dry Bulb Dehumid
correlation equation fit for the remaining
0.4% Evaporation Design Point – Wet Bulb WB – Evap °F
cities, and further discussion on this is-
0.4% Evaporation Design Point – Mean Coincident Dry
sue is given in the results section. MCDB – Evap °F
Bulb
Total Annual Rainfall Total Rainfall inches
Economic Analysis
This study determined the simple pay- Total Rainfall During Cooling Season, Defined as April 1
April–Oct Rain inches
Through Oct. 31
back period for a condensate collection
system expected to capture a low, me- Table 1: Weather data parameters used in correlation study.
dium and high amount of condensate.
The amount collected is a function of the amount of incom- sump into a small collection basin and then pumps that water
ing outdoor air, since that is the primary source of additional to a simple method of reuse, such as back into the basin of a
moisture (ignoring minor additions from the occupants and chiller cooling tower. A fairly robust and simple system for
other activities such as cooking). For the purposes of this installation has been verified by implementation in approxi-
study, we considered typical low, medium and high amounts mately 10 retrofit applications the past few years, and further
of incoming outdoor ventilation air, which were assumed to details on this design are contained in Reference 6. These pro-
be 1,000, 5,000 and 20,000 cfm (500, 2500 and 10 000 L/s), vide the basis for the condensate system cost in this study.
respectively. The outdoor airflow rates are values assumed A key to the economic viability of condensate collection is
for one individual air-handling unit, or a situation where two the water rate charged by the local water utility. Specific and
or more units are located in close enough proximity to effec- reliable cost data for the combined water/sewer rates could
tively have their condensate flow combined. A high level of not be identified for two of the 47 cities used in this study, and
outdoor airflow could be the result of either a large volume these were left out of the economic evaluations (but not the
air-handling unit, or a unit with smaller supply air capacity regression correlation study).
but with a large fraction of the total flow being outdoor air,
such as with a dedicated outdoor air supply unit. The eco- Results
nomic analysis results presented in this paper were results Condensate Prediction and Correlation Studies
from the “high” level of outdoor airflow and based on the as- The condensate prediction correlation study results are
sumption that this ventilation airflow occurred continuously summarized in Table 2. This evaluation process worked to-
24 hours per day. ward one key goal of this study: that being a derivation of a
This analysis did not account for the effect of including a simple to use correlation equation of the amount of conden-
ventilation energy recovery system that includes latent en- sate collected annually for a steady unit value of incoming
ergy recovery. Thus, the amount of condensate and resulting outdoor airflow.
economic benefits would need to be adjusted to account for The “p-value” statistics were used to help guide the deci-
the latent recovery effectiveness of the unit. Similarly, adjust- sions on which parameters to select for reducing the number
ments should be made for systems that have variable outdoor of parameters in the next regression step. This process resulted
air intake. in determining that the three best parameters are the average
The cost of a condensate collection system will vary de- dew point (Avg. DP), cooling degree days (CDD), and the
pending on such items as: whether storage was planned and if April through October cooling season rainfall. The correla-
that storage system also included other water sources such as tion equation is given below, and the resulting predictions are
rainwater; the intended reuse(s) for the water; and how much plotted in Figure 2.
associated processing of the water is required before reuse.
For the purposes of this comparative study, we assumed a Condensate (gal/cfm) = 0.4777 × Avg. DP + 0.00204 (1)
simple system that drains the air-handling unit condensate CDD + 0.32596 × [April Through Oct. Rainfall] – 22.50

20 ASHRAE Journal a s h r a e . o r g May 2012

 Regression Regression
Regression Regression Regression
Step 4 Step 5
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3
Three Best Three Best
All Parameters Seven Best Parameters Four Best Parameters
Parameters No Low Cities

Included Included p-value Included p-value Included Included

Avg. Dew Point X X 2.14E-05 X 3.89E-12 X X

CDD X X 5.09E-09 X 1.19E-11 X X
DB X
MCWB X
HR–Cooling X X 6.23E-01
DP–Dehumid X X 8.25E-02
HR–Dehumid X
MCDB–Dehumid X
WB–Evap X X 1.07E-01
MCDB–Evap X X 7.77E-03 X 6.01E-06
Total Rainfall X
April–October Rainfall X X 4.72E-07 X 1.02E-14 X X
Resulting r² 0.9698 0.9529 0.9473 0.9136 0.9489

Table 2: Summary of correlation study results.

Economic Study Results variations in some cases magnified or somewhat skewed the
An interesting point noted during this study was that the “expected” results.
cost of water to the end consumer (residential or commer- For the case of a “high” amount of incoming outdoor air-
cial) in the study cities is not dependent on the amount of flow, the simple payback for the various cities ranged between
locally available water supplies, as determined by the an- 1.0 and 1,430 years, and a plot of these results is given in Fig-
nual rainfall amounts. This is illustrated in Figure 3, which ure 4, ignoring the two cities with payback periods exceeding
plots the combined water and sewer rates ($1,000/gallons) 1,000 years. The variability in the data from the straight line is
versus average annual total precipitation. This has the ef- due to differences in water cost at each site.
fect of blurring the economic evaluation results from being Approximately 18 of the study cities could be characterized
simply how much condensate water is collected to also the as being obvious localities for requiring, or at least strongly
need to consider local water utility rates, since they cannot considering, application of condensate collection systems.
be predicted by local availability in terms of rainfall. The These cities are identified as the “First Tier.” All but one of
economic payback depends on both the amount of water these cities had simple payback periods of nine years or less
collected as well as the local cost of water, so the water cost for the “high” outdoor airflow case, with the one exception
Predicted Condensate (gallon/cfm Outdoor Airflow)

35 20
Cost of Water/Sewer Service Combined

r2=0.9489
18
30
16
25
($/1,000 gallons)

14

20 12
Honolulu
10
15
8

10 6

4
5
2
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Actual Condensate (gallon/cfm Outdoor Airflow) Average Annual Rainfall (in.)
Figure 2 (left): Regression equation prediction results. Figure 3 (right): Water cost at study cities compared to annual local rainfall.

22 ASHRAE Journal a s h r a e . o r g May 2012

being a locality (Omaha, Neb.) that has very low water rates
as of the latest information available. Being that this city has a 1,000
Not Recommended
fairly high potential for capturing condensate, it is categorized

Simple Economic Payback

Second Tier
with the First Tier set of localities. Each of these cities has a First Tier
predicted annual amount of condensate collected of at least 7 100
gallons of water per cfm of outdoor air (50 liters water per L/s

(years)
of outdoor air).
Another nine cities are considered to be marginal for consid-
eration (the “Second Tier”). In these locations, the final decision 10

on an individual building project should be based on site-spe-

cific factors, such as the ease of reuse of the collected water and
3 gal/cfm 7 gal/cfm
the building owner’s preferences to incorporate more sustain- 1
able design aspects in their project. Each of these cities has a 0.01 0.1 1 10

predicted annual amount of condensate collected of greater than Annual Condensate Collected (gallons/cfm Outdoor Airflow)
3 but less than 7 gallons of water per cfm of outdoor air (25 but Figure 4: Simple economic payback study results.
less than 50 liters of water per L/s of out-
door air). The remaining cities would not
be recommended for condensate collec-
tion based strictly on an economic evalua-
tion, although again this technology could
be considered on a case-by-case basis. The
location of these tiers of cities on a map of
the U.S. is given in Figure 5.

Results Summary
Table 3 summarizes, for each city stud-
ied, the amount of condensate collected
from the weather prediction model, the
amount predicted by the regression Equa-
tion 1, the cost of water used in the analysis,
and the simple economic payback based on
the weather prediction model for the repre-
sentative case study evaluation.

Discussion Figure 5: Locations of recommended and second tier cities for condensate collection
The correlation study was successful based on simple economic analysis.
in the development of a simple regres-
sion equation to predict the amount of condensate expected of Honolulu, the regression equation significantly under-
at a given locality using readily available weather and cli- predicted the amount of condensate collected. This would
matic data parameters within a fairly high confidence level. be one suggested area for further study, although these loca-
Even though the regression study and results were based tions would be expected to be obvious choices for conden-
strictly on data for U.S. cities, the science involved knows sate collection systems.
no political boundaries, and thus these results could be Several avenues are also suggested for future research in the
applied with confidence to other countries and regions of technical and public policy areas. One would be to investigate
the world. The regression equation had better success pre- methods for expanding the predicted amount of condensate
dicting the amount of condensate for the two cities in sub- from a fixed incoming outdoor ventilation airflow rate to one
tropical Florida (Orlando and Miami), than for the purely that includes variable amounts of outdoor airflow, or also situ-
tropical city of Honolulu. The specific cause of this trend in ations where latent energy recovery systems are used in addi-
potentially under-predicting tropical locations is unknown tion to the condensate collection. These cases would represent
at this time. situations with the inclusion of demand-controlled ventilation,
We recommend the extension of this correlation study to systems that do not operate continuously (such as shutdown
regions with even more extensive amounts of expected con- during unoccupied hours), and systems that include energy re-
densate, such as pure tropical climates. Although the U.S. covery using enthalpy wheels or similar devices.
includes areas with a hot-humid climate, all but one (Ho- Other avenues for suggested research include looking at
nolulu) are technically considered subtropical. In the case this issue from the public policy angle. For example, when

24 ASHRAE Journal a s h r a e . o r g May 2012

 Weather Regression Cost of Simple Weather Regression Cost of Simple
Data Equation Water Payback Data Equation Water Payback
Location Predicted Predicted Location Predicted Predicted
($/1,000 Period ($/1,000 Period
gal/cfm OA gal/cfm OA gal) (Years) gal/cfm OA gal/cfm OA gal) (Years)

Albuquerque, New Orleans 24.0 24.0 $7.35 1.9

0.7 * $6.51 70
NM New York, NY 8.4 9.0 $9.04 4.4
Athens, GA 13.3 13.9 $7.57 3.3 Oklahoma City,
10.3 12.2 $5.50 5.8
Bangor, ME 3.3 3.3 $9.36 10.8 OK

Billings, MT 0.2 * $4.05 355 Omaha, NE 9.5 7.9 $2.27 15.4

Boston, MA 0.06 5.1 $3.85 4.5 Orlando, FL 26.4 26.2 $4.82 2.6

Burbank, CA 5.1 4.6 $14.21 5.0 Phoenix, AZ 2.7 7.3 $6.77 18.0

Charlotte, NC 4.7 12.4 $13.86 3.4 Portland, OR 1.8 4.1 $5.05 35.9

Chicago, IL 11.4 6.1 $8.49 14.2 Rapid City, SD 1.6 * $7.01 30.4
Redmond, OR 0.7 * $6.37 72.0
Columbus,
6.2 5.5 $3.73 6.8
OH
Sacramento, CA 1.8 3.4 $11.47 16.0
Dallas, TX 6.5 16.5 $7.43 4.0
Salt Lake City 0.2 * $6.21 333
Denver, CO 16.0 * $5.24 139
San Antonio 19.0 17.1 $3.63 4.8
Des Moines,
0.6 6.5 $4.26 5.7
IA
San Diego, CA 7.3 4.9 $10.23 4.4
Detroit, MI 5.7 4.9 $6.41 9.0
San Francisco 1.2 1.7 $12.10 22.2
El Paso, TX 2.7 1.9 $6.25 19.7
San Jose, CA 1.8 2.5 $10.84 16.8
Fairbanks, AK 0.2 * $14.71 98
San Luis
Fresno, CA 1.7 4.6 $3.31 60 1.3 1.6 $17.49 14.5
Obispo, CA
Honolulu, HI 25.7 20.2 $6.01 2.1 Seattle, WA 0.8 * $17.35 25.4
Knoxville, TN 10.9 11.2 $5.71 5.3
Sioux Falls, SD 4.8 2.4 $8.11 8.5
Las Vegas,
0.6 * $3.31 182
NV Spokane, WA 0.04 * $7.42 1113
Lubbock, TX 5.0 5.9 $6.34 10.5 St Louis, MO 8.0 9.5 $4.68 8.8
Memphis, TN 13.3 15.1 $2.66 9.3 Syracuse, NY 6.5 6.4 $5.15 9.9
Miami, FL 31.4 31.9 $10.75 1.0 Topeka , KS 11.2 10.9 $6.27 4.7
Minneapolis,
4.6 2.4 $8.00 8.9 Washington, DC 9.8 10.0 $9.21 3.7
MN

Table 3: Summary of study results by city (*cities not included in final regression).

would it make sense for a locality or region to mandate the
inclusion of condensate collection for new building con-
struction or major renovations? Factors such as the availabil-
ity of fresh water locally, the pricing for delivered potable
water supplies and the general local design standards and
acceptance of water reuse systems would likely be a big part
of this type of study.
References
1. ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1-2009, Standard for
the Design of High Performance Green Buildings. www.ashrae.org/
greenstandard.
2. International Code Council. 2012. “International Green Construc-
tion Code.” http://tinyurl.com/72cppv4.
3. Guz, K. 2005. “Sustainability: Condensate Water Recovery.”
ASHRAE Journal 47(6):54 – 56.
4. Bryant, J.A., T. Ahmed. 2008. “Condensate water collection for
an institutional building in Doha, Qatar: an opportunity for water
sustainability.” Proceedings of the Sixteenth Symposium on Improving
Building Systems in Hot and Humid Climates.
5. Painter, F.L. 2009. “Condensate harvesting from large dedicated
outside air-handling units with heat recovery.” ASHRAE Transactions
115(2):573 – 580.
6. Lawrence, T.M., J. Perry and P. Dempsey. 2010. “Making every
drop count: retrofitting condensate collection on HVAC air-handling
units. ASHRAE Journal 52(1):48 – 54.
7. Lawrence, T.M., J. Perry and P. Dempsey. 2010. “Predicting
condensate from HVAC air handling units.” ASHRAE Transactions
116(2):3 – 15.
8. Lawrence, T.M., and J. Perry. 2010. “Capturing Condensate.”
High Performing Buildings 3(4):56 – 61.
9.  2009 ASHRAE Handbook—Fundamentals.
10. National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 2008. National Solar
Radiation Data Base. TMY3 data download.http://tinyurl.com/bup5csr.
Accessed June 8, 2011.

May 2012 ASHRAE Journal 25

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