ASHRAE 62.1 Ventilation Analysis

ASHRAE 62.1 sets the ventilation rates for commercial buildings — specifying the outdoor air flow rates required for each space type based on the number of occupants and the floor area. While the concept is simple (bring in enough fresh air), the calculation involves multiple interacting variables that make manual compliance checking error-prone.

The ventilation rate procedure in ASHRAE 62.1 calculates outdoor air requirements for each zone based on occupant density and space-specific rates, then determines the system-level outdoor air intake using the multiple-zone system calculation that accounts for the critical zone's ventilation efficiency. AI performs these zone-by-zone and system-level calculations automatically, ensuring that every space receives adequate ventilation without over-conditioning outdoor air (which wastes energy).

For energy-conscious designs, AI helps optimize the ventilation strategy — evaluating demand-controlled ventilation based on CO2 sensing, energy recovery ventilation effectiveness, and the trade-offs between different HVAC system configurations. These optimizations can significantly reduce the energy penalty of ventilation while maintaining or exceeding the air quality requirements, but they require detailed zone-by-zone analysis that is impractical to optimize manually.