Thermal Comfort Investigation of Personal Environmental Control Systems in Office

The aim of this study was to understand the actual operating conditions in an office where personal comfort systems (PCS) were used, and their influence on workers' thermal comfort and workplace productivity, depending on the different thermal ambient environment. Questionnaire surveys were conducted with three different system operation modes, changing the use of PCS and the ambient environment. Results showed that the PCS use frequency decreased along with the ambient temperature; however, certain workers' frequency of usage remained unchanged irrespective of the change in the ambient environment. We divided workers into two groups based on the frequency of PCS use and found that a higher use can mitigate the decrease in thermal comfort levels and workplace productivity associated with the increase in the ambient temperature by 0.7°C. We also found that an interior operative temperature of 26.6 °C correlates with higher levels of thermal comfort and workplace productivity.