Integration and Validation of the Phase Change Materials on Thermal Comfort and Energy Efficiency of Buildings Envelope

Abstract

The envelope of buildings has remained for a long time a passive means of limiting heat loss or heat gain on the one hand, to ensure a certain air conditioning by its thermal inertia. The increase in peak electricity demand in recent years has stressed the importance of peak electricity demand shifting technologies. The overall objective of the project is to improve the living conditions of the local population. The specific objective is to set up a pilot unit using local building materials, with low environmental impact, provided with organic phase change materials also the main objective here is to model, quantify and optimize the impact of the presence of PCMs in a thermal zone subjected to the climatic conditions of Morocco with the ultimate goal of developing low energy buildings and crated the comfort zone. First, a complete numerical model of the thermal behavior of a zone will be developed using the Trnsys, with the possibility of including phase change materials. The achievement of this objective will allow to have available a customized code, fully scalable, able to calculate all the thermal variables of interest in a building interacting with the environment. Such a complex wall technology integrating PCMs must be properly taken into account in order to simulate the energetic behavior of buildings and to evaluate their impact in several domains (environmental, thermal behavior of buildings). Once the thermal characterization of the building has been performed.  (PCMs) have a potential to improve the building envelope by increasing the thermal mass as well as contribute to a signify cant peak shift in whole building power demand. Therefore, special attention is given to properly capture the thermal behavior of PCMs in advanced building energy modeling software. Design of effective PCM thermal storage systems requires accurate energy modeling. There are analytical and numerical models developed during last few decades for this purpose, many have not been fully validated. Based on the current status of literature, the study identifies the limitations and drawbacks of existing methods. A parametric study is conducted to identify the optimum PCM thermo-physical properties, The results show that the Mechanical solar ventilation with the phase change materials (PCM+MSV) reduces the operating temperature of the house significantly and relative humidity and maintain the demand energy from HVAC system. Indeed, the Mechanical solar ventilation has decreased its average operating temperature by about 2.7°C-3°C and created the fresh and comfort space.