New methodology and perspective for the air flow and thermal comfort characterization of personalized devices

Personal Comfort Systems (PCS) are appliances available on the market and widely used since long time. Nevertheless, they were always considered just as a secondary equipment to be used for backing up or supporting centralized heating/cooling systems. In this paper a review of the increasing role that such devices may play in the future Zero Energy Buildings will be given. Moreover, the limitation of the typical current design procedures will be highlighted, providing suggestions on how the thermal comfort of the users should guide the conception and development of PCSs. Finally, a case study will be presented, where the current theories about the thermal comfort have been modified in order to establish a rationale for analyzing the performance of a personalized device for thermal comfort.