BS2025 / Program / Building Performance Simulation of a semitransparent Trombe wall Coupled with a Latent Thermal Energy Storage

Building Performance Simulation of a semitransparent Trombe wall Coupled with a Latent Thermal Energy Storage

Location
Room 9
Time
August 25, 3:30 pm-3:45 pm

A viable use of solar thermal applications of a building envelope can be achieved through various thermally responsive mechanisms and material choices within the construction. The principles of passive solar walls represent one of the potential ways in a building energy saving campaign. Among these walls, the Trombe wall system with its considerable solar/thermal performance for covering building energy loads has the greatest potential.

However, as they do not meet contemporary heat loss requirements (such as U-value), this is compensated by the use of significant solar heat gains and their effective heat storage potential. Accordingly, one of the options to improve the energy performance of the wall system is to replace the massive heavy wall structure with a lightweight latent heat storage material instead of the conventionally used sensible heat storage material. Therefore, the objective of the study is to simulate the building performance and evaluate a novel structure of Trombe wall coupled with Phase Change Material (PCM) in the peak cooling demand period.

In order to comprehensively investigate the latent thermal energy storage (TES) of a Trombe wall and to predict the thermal performance of the building when the PCM is incorporated, a simulation model based on an experimentally validated building energy performance prediction model was used. Different types of PCM with different temperature ranges of latent heat capacity were investigated and compared with a reference model based on sensible heat storage using ordinary concrete.

The peak variations of cooling loads are reduced by the thermal buffer structure (PCM) according to different levels of absorbed/released thermal energy. The main focus is on predicting the peak performance using numerical simulation to identify the effective temperature-enthalpy curve for building-integrated PCMs. Different utilisation of the latent heat capacity of the integrated PCMs through the peak cooling demand period revealed different climate-responsive responses to the overall thermal efficiency of the wall system. The appropriate melting temperature PCMs were verified by numerical validations to maximise the energy performance in the Central European geographical location.

The overall summary indicated that the PCM significantly reduced the cooling load compared to the concrete wall. Based on the simulated thermal performance, it is also possible to conclude that the TW-PCM has the potential to replace conventional TES based on ordinary concrete walls.

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