Zoned heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning residential systems: A systematic review

Historically, humanity has considered the control of cooling and heating an aspect related to both comfort and survival, currently being it evaluated not as a luxury, but as a fact of modern existence. In the global context, at the beginning of the 20th century, the efforts to develop cooling techniques with the aim of maintaining control climate at indoor spaces of the office and residential buildings, were evident. This initial direction that is taken to achieve comfort levels in terms of cooling and heating generates what is now called heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC). This paper provides a general description of the zoning methods that support the structural description of the thermal zones of a building, required for the design, control and maintenance of HVAC systems. The main objective of this study is to systematically review the current research on zoning HVAC residential systems. The article conclusion is that an intelligent zoning strategy using a criterion associated with user behavior, occupancy patterns and its corresponding schedules, will promote the development of efficient optimization processes for energy consumption and thermal comfort if they are considered as a structural part of the HVAC system. Finally, in terms of modeling the advice is to start with a white box model, phenomenological, but to follow-up or support it with data-based models.