The effect of Phase Change materials on reducing energy consumption in residential buildings of Tehran

The use of Phase Change Materials (PCMs) for heating and cooling applications inbuildings is being studied within the past decade. PCMs are usually used in thebuilding envelope to conserve energy. Since light-weight envelopes are used inmodern buildings, there is not enough thermal inertia for heat storage. A solution toincrease this inertia is to incorporate PCM materials in the building envelope. PCMsuse latent heat at low temperature range and have a higher energy density of meltingsolidificationcompared to the sensible heat storage. BioPCM s are those materialswith non-flammable properties, that and can be safely used in buildings. In this paperwe summarise the studies on effectiveness of bio-based phase change materials(BioPCMs) for the improvement of thermal comfort and energy performance inlightweight residential buildings of Tehran. The study is based on simulation of a testroom using EnergyPlus software. The results show a good agreement with theexperimental ones. The simulation indicated that the maximum energy savings is forsouthern zone, maximum annual cooling load saving is about 33%, the amount for theheating load it is about %4 and resultantly the maximum annual heating and coolingload saving is almost 1%4.

Keywords:

Phase change material , Thermal comfort , Latent heat , EnergyPlus