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Phase Change Materials in Buildings

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Science and Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2020) | Viewed by 7092

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Laboratoire de Génie Civil et géo-Environnement (LGCgE), Université d’Artois, ULR 4515, F-62400 Béthune, France
Interests: renewable energy technologies; thermal engineering; civil engineering; heat transfer; thermal analysis; solar energy; enthalpy; TRNSYS; phase change materials
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The IEA reports that “The building and building construction sectors are responsible for 36% of overall final energy consumption and nearly 40% of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions”. Heating, cooling, and water heating are amongst the most important energy uses. Due to their energy storage potential, phase change materials (PCMs) could contribute significantly to reducing the energy consumption of buildings. By storing renewable thermal energy or waste energy, they can reduce heating consumption by delaying the start of heating systems or avoiding/limiting the use of cooling systems. This Special Issue will publish high-quality research and synthesis articles on the application of PCM in building systems, materials, and walls.

Prof. Dr. Laurent Zalewski
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • phase change materials
  • thermal energy storage (TES)
  • actice/passive thermal regulation
  • building energy consumption
  • effectiveness of phase change materials

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

28 pages, 9404 KiB  
Article
Application of Phase Change Materials and Conventional Thermal Mass for Control of Roof-Generated Cooling Loads
by Jan Kośny, William Anthony Miller, David Yarbrough, Elisabeth Kossecka and Kaushik Biswas
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(19), 6875; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10196875 - 30 Sep 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2970
Abstract
Among all of the internal fabric and external enclosure components of buildings, sloped roofs and adjacent attics are often the most dynamic areas. Roofs are exposed to high temperature fluctuations and intense solar radiation that are subject to seasonal changes in climatic conditions. [...] Read more.
Among all of the internal fabric and external enclosure components of buildings, sloped roofs and adjacent attics are often the most dynamic areas. Roofs are exposed to high temperature fluctuations and intense solar radiation that are subject to seasonal changes in climatic conditions. Following the currently rising interests in demand-side management, building energy dynamics, and the thermal response characteristics of building components, this paper contains unpublished results from past studies that focused on innovative roof and attic configurations. The authors share unique design strategies that yield significant reduction of daytime roof peak temperatures, thermal-load shavings, and up to a ten-hour shift of the peak load period. Furthermore, advance configurations of the roofs and attics that are discussed in this paper enable over 90% reductions in roof-generated peak-hour cooling loads and sometimes close to 50% reductions in overall roof-generated cooling loads as compared with traditionally constructed roofs with the same or similar levels of thermal insulation. It is expected that the proposed new roof design schemes could support the effective management of dynamic energy demand in future buildings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phase Change Materials in Buildings)
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26 pages, 46480 KiB  
Article
Numerical and Experimental Investigations of Composite Solar Walls Integrating Sensible or Latent Heat Thermal Storage
by Enghok Leang, Pierre Tittelein, Laurent Zalewski and Stéphane Lassue
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(5), 1854; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10051854 - 8 Mar 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3680
Abstract
This article studies a composite solar wall with latent storage (TES) designed to heat rooms inside buildings during the cold season. No numerical model of the composite solar wall is currently available in the Dymola/Modelica software library. The first objective of this work [...] Read more.
This article studies a composite solar wall with latent storage (TES) designed to heat rooms inside buildings during the cold season. No numerical model of the composite solar wall is currently available in the Dymola/Modelica software library. The first objective of this work is to develop one such model. The article describes the elementary components, along with the equations that allow modeling the heat transfers and storage phenomena governing both the thermal behavior and performance of the solar wall. This model was built by assembling various existing basic elements from the software’s “Building” library (e.g., models of heat transfer by convection, radiation and conduction) and then creating new elements, such as the storage element incorporating the phase change material (PCM). To validate this solar wall model, numerical results are compared to experimental data stemming from a small-scale composite solar wall manufactured in our laboratory, and the experimental set-up could be tested under real weather conditions. After verifying the level of confidence in the model, the energy performance of two solar walls, one with a conventional storage wall (sensible heat storage) the other containing a PCM (the same as in the experiment), are compared. The result indicates that the solar wall incorporating a PCM does not in this case release any more energy in the room to be heated. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phase Change Materials in Buildings)
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