Psychrometric
Psychrometric
48, January 2006). For personal use only. Additional distribution in either paper or digital form is not permitted without ASHRAE’s permission.
Psychrometric
Spreadsheet
By Steve Kavanaugh, Ph.D., Fellow ASHRAE, Barbara Hattemer McCrary and Keith A. Woodbury
M
any engineers use spreadsheet programs for calculations Review of Psychrometric Equations
Humidity Ratio
and graphing because of the variety of relatively easy-to- Psychrometric charts and equations are
convenient methods of dealing with the
use embedded features. One such feature is the Microsoft® Visual thermodynamic properties of mixtures
of water vapor and air. Obviously, an
Basic® Macro for use in Excel®. This tool permits BASIC computer important parameter is the mass of these
two components. The humidity ratio (W) W
W)
programming codes to be used to perform computations that are is used to express the mass of water vapor
per unit mass of dry air and corresponds
cumbersome with conventional spreadsheet equations. to the near right vertical axis of the psy-
chrometric chart. Current practice is to
This article describes a series of mac- added benefit of being appropriate for any use the units of mass of water to mass
ros that use psychrometric equations1 to elevation—not just sea level. The macros
compute moist air properties (humidity also can be extended to spreadsheet pro- About the Authors
ratio, dew point, enthalpy, specific vol- grams that compute the properties when Steve Kavanaugh, Ph.D., is a professor of me-
ume, specific heat, relative humidity) two airstreams are mixed, an airstream chanical engineering at the University of Alabama
by entering the dry-bulb temperature, passes through a cooling coil, a heat re- in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Barbara Hattemer McCrary
is an engineer with Johnson, Spellman and Associ-
wet-bulb temperature (RH), and local covery unit, or a heating coil. Engineers
ates in Norcross, Ga., and a former grants-in-aid
elevation. can cut and paste the necessary macros recipient at the University of Alabama. Keith A.
The resulting spreadsheet is essentially from existing public domain programs or Woodbury is an associate professor of mechanical
an electronic psychrometric chart with the develop their own versions. engineering at the University of Alabama.
cp ((Btu/lba – °F) = 0.24 + 0.444W (9) (c8/RT + c9 + c10 × RT + c11 × RT2 + c12 × RT3 + c13 × Log(RT))
Use Equation 4 to find the saturated humidity ratio at the wet bulb-temperature
The specific volume of moist air is: wsat = (pws × 0.62198) / (AtmPress – pws)
Psychrometric Equations in Spreadsheet Macro Format Figure 1: Macro for humidity ratio from dry-bulb temperature,
Previous articles in ASHRAE Journal have alluded to the use wet-bulb temperature and elevation.
of spreadsheet macros for com-
puting piping pressure drops2 and
solving for friction factors in air
ducts.3 These articles emphasized
another spreadsheet tool (Goal
Seek) that was used to iteratively
solve the implicit Colebrook
equation for friction factor ( f ).
This additional tool is unneces-
sary since the computation of
moist air properties is straightfor-
ward once the macro for humidity
ratio is developed.
Figure 1 is an example macro
for computing humidity ratio
from the dry-bulb temperature
(tta), wet bulb (ttwb), and elevation
(feet above sea level). The macro
is stored in an Excel module in the
form of a function called HumRat.
The function is used just like any
other Excel function by clicking
on a cell in the main spreadsheet
and inserting an “=” sign and the Figure 2: Dew-point spreadsheet. Visual Basic Editor is accessed from a drop-down menu.