ae sustainability Article Sustainable Air-Conditioning Systems Enabled by Artificial Intelligence: Research Status, Enterprise Patent Analysis, and Future Prospects Dasheng Lee * and Liyuan Chen ashes Updates ‘lation Lee, DB Chesy Sushinable AicCondstioning Systems Enabled by Atif Iovlgence: Research erprin Patent Analysis and Future Prospects, Sutinahihy 2022, 14,7514 tp /do ong/10.380/ Academic and An nor: Junnian Song Accepted ne 002 Published: 20 june 2022 Publishers Note: MDP stays net with ert uridine in ublihed mapeand inetittonal af eo Copyright: © 202 by the authors eenese MDP, Basel, Switzerland atte bs te atle Ustbuted under the tem and condon of he Creative Commene Atebution (CC BY) ons tp 7 cretivecommonsorg/censes/b9/ son, Department of Energy and Refrigerating Ai-Conditoning Engincering, National Tspei University of Technology ‘Taipei 10608, Taiwan iyuanchendlyepa com tw * Comeepondence:f11L67@ntut edu tw Abstract: Artificial intelligence (Al) technologies have developed rapidly since 2000. Numerous academic papers have been published regarding energy efficiency improvements for air-conditioning, systems. This study reviewed 12 review papers and selected 85 specific cases of applications of AL for HVAC energy usage reduction. In addition to academic studies, 31,221 patents related to HVAC energy-saving equipment fled by 11 companies were investigated. In order to analyze the large amount of data this study developed a resource description framework (RDF) as an analysis tool. This tool was used with a natural language processing (NLP) program to compare the contents of academic papers and patents, With the automated analysis program, this study aimed to link academic research and corporate research and development, mainly the enterprise patent applications, to analyze the reasons why Al can effectively save energy. This represents a complete analysis of the current status fof academic and industrial development. Six methods were identified to save energy effectively, including model-based predictive control (MPC), thermal comfort control, model-free predictive control, control optimization, multi-agent control (MAC), and knowledge-based system/rule set (KBS/RS)-based control. The energy savings of these methods were quantified to be 8.8-25.5%. These methods are widely covered by the examined corporate patent applications. After using NLP to retrieve patent keywords, the landseapes of enterprise patents were constructed and the future research directions were identified. It is concluded that 10 topics, including novel neural network designs, smartphone-assisted machine leaning, and transfer learning, can be used to increase the energy-saving effects of Al and enable sustainable air-conditioning systems. Keywords: artificial intelligence (Al) sustainable air-conditioning system; energy saving; model-based, predictive control (MPC); patent; commercalization 1. Introduction Ina project supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology at Taiwan, the key- ‘words ‘artifical intelligence’ (Al) and ‘heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning’ (HVAC) ‘were searched for in the ScienceDirect database and IEEE Explore in August 2021. A total of 664 academic papers were identified. The main purpose of this study was to explore sustainable air-conditioning systems enabled by AI. This study first analyzed review papers 10 identify the technology gap. A tolal of 14 review papers published between 2000 and 2020 were analyzed. ‘The abstract information of these papers is presented as follows: smart buildings and HVAC equipment related papers, reviewed by Wong et al. [1]; a review of advanced control systems, especially multi-agent control systems (MACSs) for energy and comfort manage- ment in buildings, presented by Dounic and Caraiscos [2]; a review of AI applications for refrigeration, air-conditioning, and heat pump systems, presented by Mohanraj et al. [3]; review of computing models developed for predicting building energy consumption by Zhao and Magoulés [4]; a review of the applications of artificial neural networks (ANNs),