Mollier diagram: Part 1 - The Steve Jobs of

the 19th century

- by Jeroen Fijan – 12/11/19

Ever wonder what applications looked like a century ago? Here is the story of Richard
Mollier, one of the first programmers in an era before smartphones and computers.

In this blog series we are going to dive deeper into one of the most powerful tools of HVAC
technology; the Mollier diagram.

Part one; an introduction.

The age of efficiency

Bless the century in which we are living. There are so many things that make our life so much
easier – from the active park assist function on your car to the supermarket order app on your
smartphone with same-day delivery of your groceries.

All of this efficiency rests upon advanced hardware and software.

Computers don’t get tired or make mistakes, so they have taken over many dull and repetitive
tasks and been incorporated in all layers of our society.

Back in the day

Before the advent of computers, all those boring jobs had to be done in person. If you had to
make a thousand calculations, you would have to work your way through them yourself. I get
tired just thinking about solving a thousand equations!

This was an issue that bothered Richard Mollier, a professor of applied science and mechanics
in late-19th-century Germany. He worked on the big technology of his day – steam engines.

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This required finding out the properties of water in a given state, which in turn called for
endless calculations.

It started with a homicide

Hanging out in a café one day reading a newspaper, Mollier came upon the story of a
homicide in a neighbouring village. Stressed as he was with the mathematical problems in his
work, he found this story a welcome diversion.

There were three suspects in the case: the wife, the mailman and a mistress who was ten years
the victim’s junior. The journalist had written a list with all the facts known about the
suspects, which looked something like this:

Suspect: Wife
Age: 35
Motive: Jealousy
Alibi: Drinking tea with friends

As Mollier was reading the story, with the mathematical problems from his work still fresh in
the back of his mind, he had a revelation: What if he made a chart with all the thermodynamic
suspects for every state? He got to work and made it happen.

Get the friction out of the system

To be honest, I don’t know if it happened exactly this way. I like to think it did. The fact is,
Mollier found a way to simplify calculations involving thermodynamic processes.

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If you calculate all the properties of a thousand given states, you develop a chart with all the
data you will need in the future. While connecting the dots, Mollier ended up with the famous
H-S diagram which plots total heat against entropy. This shows the state and every property
which belongs to it in a fairly simple chart.

Conclusion
Of course, Mollier probably needed to make a thousand calculations before he finished – but
the people who followed him would be free of this tedious job forever. In that sense, you can
see Mollier as one of the first programmers, making complex tasks easier and more efficient.
And we are still using the solution he found more than a hundred years ago!

In the next part we are going to dive deeper in the theoretic principles and the magic behind
the diagram. Sign in for our newsletter if you don’t want to miss a thing about this topic.

Jeroen Fijan | R&D Manager

Jeroen Fijan has been working at Heinen & Hopman since 2001. He started as a
draughtsman and, over the years, worked his way up to the top of the R&D division.
Sustainability is a top priority in the quest to improve H&H's products and processes.

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Mollier diagram, part 2: the diagram
explained
- by Jeroen Fijan, 27/03/20

Richard Mollier was a professor of Applied Physics and Mechanics and a pioneer of
experimental research in thermodynamics in the late 19th century. He carried out meticulous
calculations for every state and property of air.

The result: the emblematic HX diagram.

An easy-to-read tool still in use today. In this issue of our blog, we explain how the diagram
works and how to read it.

The purpose of the Mollier diagram

Why make thousands of calculations every time you need to predict the state of a medium?
Richard Mollier saved us a tremendous amount of time by making all those calculations for us
and instead giving us this powerful tool.

The diagram provides a graphic representation of the relationship between physical conditions
and the corresponding changes in the system: the two can be linked simply by drawing some
lines and knowing what their intersections represent.

Temperature lines
Constant temperature lines in the diagram are largely horizontal, but slightly tilted. Each line
corresponds to a temperature, and they are simple and proportionate – in other words, if you
need the line for 21.5°C and this is not indicated in the graph, you can simply imagine a line
exactly in the middle between those for 21 and 22°C.

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Image 1: Temperature

Absolute humidity
The vertical lines in the diagram represent absolute humidity in grams per kilogram, with a
range from 0 to 40 g/kg. They show how much water vapour the air can contain at different
temperatures: the warmer the air, the more water vapour it can contain.

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Image 2: Absolute humidity

Relative humidity
The curved lines in the diagram represent the relative humidity of air. As we mentioned
above, air can hold a fixed amount of water vapour. Relative humidity is the ratio of existing
water vapour in the air to the maximum possible amount of vapour the air could potentially
contain.

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Image 3: Relative humidity

The 100% humidity line is also called the saturation line. This is the maximum amount of
vapour that air in a given condition can contain.

Specific enthalpy
The diagonal lines in the diagram represent specific enthalpy, which indicates the internal
energy of the air. Again, as with humidity, this is higher when the air is hotter.

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Image 4: Specific enthalpy

Air density
The last set of lines in the diagram are the lines of air density, which range from 1.1 to 1.35
kg/m³. Colder air is heavier than hotter air as colder molecules are packed more closely
together and thus denser in low temperatures. As temperature rises, the atoms enter a more
excited state, and space between them increases, reducing density.

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Image 5: Air density

Dew point and wet bulb temperature

The dew point and wet bulb temperature are two important variables that can be read
indirectly from the Mollier diagram. The dew point is the temperature at which air starts to
condense. The wet-bulb temperature is the theoretical temperature read by a thermometer
covered in water-soaked cloth over which air is passed.

As an example, let us imagine an arbitrary state, like 25°C with 50% relative humidity. You
can find the dew point by drawing a line from the point where the 50% relative humidity
curve intersects with an imaginary line indicating a temperature of 25°C in the graph straight
down to the saturation line (which, as you remember, represents 100% relative humidity). The
temperature corresponding to this point is the dew point temperature – in this case 14°C.

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Image 6: Finding the dew point

For the wet bulb temperature, we again start from the point where relative humidity is 50%
and temperature is 25°C, but instead of a vertical line, we follow the specific enthalpy line
down to the saturation line. The temperature at this point is the wet bulb temperature, or
around 18.3°C in our example.

Image 7: Finding the wet bulb temperature

In the next blog, we’ll show you how to make practical use of the diagram by making
calculations with it.

Jeroen Fijan | R&D Manager

Jeroen Fijan has been working at Heinen & Hopman since 2001. He started as a
draughtsman and, over the years, worked his way up to the top of the R&D division.
Sustainability is a top priority in the quest to improve H&H's products and processes.

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Mollier part 3: how to use a Mollier
diagram
- by Jeroen Fijan, 23/04/20

This is a quick, no-nonsense guide to using the Mollier diagram. While we’ve done our best to
make this as easy as possible to understand, it does require some knowledge about what the
lines stand for – so if you’re unfamiliar with the diagram, please read the first and second
parts of this blog.

Getting started
The diagram is used to engineer an air handling unit. In this example, we will show you how
to calculate the following aspects of a unit using the Mollier diagram:

• Cooling coil
• Heater capacity
• Steam humidifier

We start by establishing the outside and inside conditions. This is our field of operation,
which sets the boundaries within which we work.

A common mistake is to set the conditions extremely high. To be ‘on the safe side’. We often
get requests for outside conditions like 50°C – 80%RH. Not only are these impossible
ambient conditions, it will make the installation unnecessary heavy and more difficult to
operate.

For this example, we will assume the following conditions:

Outside: 35 °C – 70% RH
Inside: 21 °C – 60% RH

Energy efficiency
Every system reduces energy loss by using the heat or cold that are already present and
transferring part into the outside air. There are a range of ways to reduce energy, each of
which has its pros and cons. In this example, we will use one of the most common methods: a
recirculation rate of 50%.

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Image 1: Recirculation rate

Calculating cooling coil

The cooling coil we are using is chilled water-fed, with a temperature of 12 °C in and 6 °C
out.

1: Marking points in the diagram

We start with the easy part, that is putting the fixed points into the diagram. We begin by
locating the outside and inside condition and drawing a line between them.

Image 2: Outside and inside conditions

2: Determining the mixing temperature

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Remember, we are recirculating 50% of the air for energy efficiency purposes. This means the
temperature in front of the cooler will be a mix between outside and inside conditions. To
calculate the mixing temperature, we use a simple equation:

Let us assume a total air amount of 20,000 m³/h. With a recirculation rate of 50%, this gives
us 10,000 m³/h for both outside and inside air streams. Now we can calculate the mixing
temperature:

This gives us a mixing temperature of 28 °C.

Image 3: Mixing temperature

3: Cooling the air

The cooler dew point (CDP) is 9 °C and set on the saturation line. You’ll get the CDP by
taking the average temperature of the cooling coil, which is 12 °C in and 6 °C out.

To determine the cooler capacity, we follow the lines of constant enthalpy between the mixing
temperature and CDP.

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Image 4: Cooler capacity

This gives us 72 kJ/kg – 27 kJ/kg = 45 kJ/kg

Heater capacity
The temperature behind the cooler will be around 9 °C. We can round up a degree because of
the residual heat of the ventilator, resulting in a temperature of 10°C. Room temperature is 21
°C, giving a temperature differential of 11 °C.

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Image 5: Heating the air

Now we have enough information to calculate the heater capacity using the Q=m*c*ΔT
equation. For this example, resulting in a heater capacity of 76kW.

Humidifying the air

In this example, we use a steam humidifier to bring the air up to a relative humidity of 60%.

Cooling the air extracts a lot of moisture from it.

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Image 6: Extracting moisture by cooling

Now, heating the air brought it to a temperature of 21 °C without changing the absolute
humidity. Looking at this line, we see a gap of 2.2 g/kg between our current point and the
desired value.

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Image 7: Humidifying the air

Now we just need to convert the air amount of 20,000 m³/h to kg/s to find out how large the
steam humidifier needs to be. For this example, resulting in a humidifier capacity of 15.2 kg.

Wrapping things up
So, does this cover every detail? Of course not.

For one thing, we didn’t integrate the bypass factor, which accounts for the fact that not every
air particle running through the cooling coil is affected by the decrease in temperature.

And what about all the different methods of energy recovery, like the heat recovery wheel,
twin coils or cross heat exchangers? Or adiabatic humidifying?

Like I mentioned above, this is a quick and dirty description of how the Mollier diagram can
be used to give a fairly accurate estimation of an air handling unit’s capacities.

To get familiar with the diagram, you can try using different conditions. This example only
included summer conditions: see what happens with the capacity of the heater and steam
humidifier when you set the outside conditions to -5 °C and 20% RH.

Jeroen Fijan | R&D Manager

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