Enhancing thermal performance of PCM integrated building envelope by controlling radiant heat transfer in walls

Abstract

In this study, researcher propose a system that controls the amount of radiant heat transfer inside the wall to improve the thermal performance of the phase change material integrated building envelope system. The proposed system controls the amount of internal radiant heat transfer by mounting different emissivity films on the front and back sides of the phase change material inside the envelope and moving them according to the situation. The thermal performance of the proposed system was investigated by 1D transient heat transfer simulation and compared with reference systems. The simulation was performed with Matlab 2021a, and the summer and winter weather data of IWEC2 Seoul were reflected. As a result of the simulation, the phase change material of the proposed system showed improved thermal behavior compared to other reference cases. In addition, compared to the reference cases, the indoor heat gain in summer was reduced by a minimum of 47.2% to a maximum of 56.1%, and the indoor heat loss in the winter was reduced by a mini-mum of 11.3% to a maximum of 27.3%. In addition, an experiment was conducted to examine the feasibility of the proposed system. Through the experiment, the feasibility of the proposed system was examined by confirming whether the temperature change tendency of the internal component surface appeared similarly in the experiment and the simulation. As a result of the experiment, it was confirmed that the tendency of the surface temperature change of the internal components was partially similar in the experiments and simulations. In addition, the temperature change according to the control of the emissivity film was observed similarly in the experiments and simulations, so that the possibility of the proposed system could be re-viewed. Through the two results, it was confirmed that the proposed system can improve the thermal performance by improving the problem of the phase change material integrated building envelope. Therefore, in this study, it was confirmed that the proposed system can improve the thermal performance of the phase change material integrated building envelope, and the areas that need improvement and future development directions are also discussed at the conclusion of the study.