Technological improvements in creating controlled thermo-hygrometric conditions in sealed microenvironments:the Dew Point Climatic Generator

In this contribution a new methodology of climate control, specifically designed for Cultural Heritage artifacts storage microenvironments, is presented. Standard conditioning systems work using the subtraction of vapor in the air by means of condensation on cold surfaces as a drying strategy and the addition of water vapor, obtained in different ways, to humidify the air. Temperature (T) and Relative Humidity (RH) are controlled by two different control loops. Using this new system, currently in patent pending status, it is possible to obtain a wide range of T and RH values circulating the air flow (via a common air circulation pump) through a water gurgling device and a heating device, using the ?T between the water temperature in the gurgling device and the set temperature of the heating section. The system is very robust and straightforward: the sensible-latent transformation of the air flow in each one of the 4 possible directions (heating-drying, heatinghumidification, cooling-drying, cooling-humidification) is obtained by two passages operated by only two devices (bubbler device + heating device) controlled by two temperature probes, one in the bubbler and one in the heating section. The system has been successfully implemented in some different case-studies in Italy and in the United States.