Electrochromism-induced adaptive fresh air pre-handling system for building energy saving

Abstract

Building fresh air supply needs to meet certain regulations and fit people's ever-growing indoor air quality demand. However, fresh air handling requires huge energy consumption that goes against the goal of net-zero energy buildings. Thus, in this work, an adaptive fresh air pre-handling system is designed to reduce the cooling and heating loads of HVAC system. The sky-facing surface of the system uses electrochromic mechanism to manipulate the optical properties and thus make full use of solar energy (solar heating) and deep space cold source (radiative cooling) by switching between heating and cooling modes. In the cooling mode, the sky-facing surface shows a transmittance of down to zero, while the reflectance is high at 0.89 on average. In the heating mode, the electrochromic glass is highly transparent, allowing the sunlight to reach the solar heat absorber. To obtain the energy-saving potential under different climates, six cities were selected from various climate regions in China. Results show that the adaptive fresh air pre-handling system can be effective in up to 55.4% time of a year. The maximum energy-saving ratios for medium office, warehouse, and single-family house can reach up to 11.52%, 26.62%, and 18.29%, respectively. In addition, the system shows multi-climate adaptability and broad application scenarios, making it a potential solution to building energy saving.