Equal-Sorption Microclimate Control Applied to the Holy Cross Chapel at Karlštejn Castle

Abstract

The paper deals with a scheme of the microclimate control developed for preventive conservation purposes to inhibiting the undesirable moisture sorption phenomena in historical exposition rooms. The proposed microenvironment control of this kind was applied for the first time in the Holy Cross Chapel at Karlstejn Castle, Czech Republic. The harmful exposure, namely the strain in the deposited art works produced by the variations of moisture sorption is inhibited by a specific control of interior air humidity. The original idea of air humidity control compensating for this harmful impact has been further investigated to achieve a more precise maintenance of acceptable variation of moisture content. The paper presents the recent results of this research leading to a proposal for modification of the first application of this method in Karlstejn Castle. The control leaves the interior temperature to run almost its spontaneous year cycle while a non-linear model-based control provides adequate adjustments of interior temperature and air humidity just compensating for the moisture sorption variations due to the ambient condition changes. This compensation prevents the exhibits from the harmful variations of the moisture content changes and from their harmful effects. The air handling device and control was implemented in the chapel already in 1999 and the proposed modification of microclimate control is to achieve a more precise maintaining permanently the desirable moisture content in the organic or porous materials of art works inside the Chapel.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.