The following article was published in ASHRAE Journal, May, 2002.

© Copyright 2002 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-

Conditioning Engineers, Inc. It is presented for educational purposes only. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electronically or in
paper form without permission of ASHRAE.

Duct Design Issues

Kitchen Hood Exhaust Fan

4,200 cfm
3,000 cfm 3,000 cfm
Adjustable Discharge
Kitchen Damper — Open Kitchen
Damper
0 cfm 6,000 cfm Return Air Fan
6,000 cfm
Return Air Figure 1: Preheat
Damper — Open 1,200
Minimum Discharge
Dining Room cfm
coil in normal lo-
Air Damper Adjustable OA Damper cation (kitchen
3,000 cfm 8,000 cfm operating).*
AHU 800
5,000 cfm 8,000 cfm
cfm
Preheat Coil
Minimum AHU Contains Freezestat, Fan, Face and
OA Damper Bypass Dampers, Heating and Cooling Coils

Innovative Preheating of Outside Air

By William F. Albern, P.E., Fellow/Life Member ASHRAE

ecently, I reviewed the HVAC system for the dining coil in an outdoor air intake. Cold air, –10°F (–23°C) in Ithaca,

R room at the McGraw House. This seven-story senior

citizen housing building in Ithaca, N.Y. was constructed
in 1972. The owner was dissatisfied with the ventila-
tion of the facility’s kitchen. The 1972 drawings indicated
that return air was taken from the dining room and part of it
was introduced into the kitchen to supply makeup air to the
kitchen range exhaust hood. Additional air was directly in-
troduced to the kitchen through the doors between the
kitchen and the dining room.
This was a typical method of providing makeup air to a hood
in a restaurant, institutional dining room, and similar facilities.
While several pages of discussion could be devoted to the
modifications to the kitchen hood exhaust/makeup air system
over the years, this column discusses what I consider an inno-
vative approach to preheating outside air. The system was de-
signed by Galson & Galson Consulting Engineers, Syracuse,
N.Y. The architect was Egner Associates, Ithaca, N.Y.
Figure 1 is a schematic with the normal location of a preheat
is introduced to the coil in the middle of winter and heated to
about 50°F (10°C) before entering the air handling system for
final conditioning to meet the needs of the space.
Figure 2 is a schematic sketch of the “preheat coil” located
in the return air duct from the space as engineered by Galson &
Galson for McGraw House. In this scheme, the 70°F (21°C) air
is heated to about 120°F (49°C)and this hot air then heats the
cold outside air to the mixed temperature of 50°F (10°C). The
end result is the same as Figure 1. However, the “preheat coil”
does not encounter –10°F (–23°C) cold air and therefore, should
not be subject to freezing.
Unfortunately, if the “preheat coil” is located very close to
the connection with the outside air duct, there still could be a
frozen coil. And, that is just what happened! However, that
does not detract from this different approach to preheating
outside air. Simply remember to keep the coil a foot (0.3 m) or
more upstream from the connection to the outside air duct and
install a freezestat downstream from the coil.

Kitchen Hood Exhaust Fan

4,200 cfm
3,000 cfm

Adjustable Discharge 3,000 cfm Kitchen

Kitchen Damper — Open Figure 2: Preheat
Damper
6,000 cfm Return Air Fan 6,000 cfm coil in return air
0 cfm
Return Air duct (kitchen op-
Minimum Discharge 72°F Damper — Open 1,200 cfm erating).*
Air Damper Dining Room
122°F
Adjustable 3,000 cfm 8,000 cfm * cfm × 0.4719 =
OA Damper 5,000 cfm 8,000 cfm
AHU 800 L/s; (°F – 32) ÷ 1.8
cfm = °C
Minimum OA AHU Contains Freezestat, Fan, Face and
Damper Bypass Dampers, Heating and Cooling Coils

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