Experimental Study of the Thermal Behavior of Perforated Bricks Wall Integrated with PCM

Abstract

The increasing need to provide standard comfort requirements inside buildings has made the construction sector one of the dominant energy consumers and a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Improving the thermal insulation efficiency of the building envelope by improving the thermal behaviour of the walls leads to giving an impetus towards reducing energy consumption. In this paper, an experimental embedding of Phase Change Materials (PCM) with perforated bricks wall. For PCM (Paraffin wax) packaging purposes, two configurations are used; capsules were manufactured to fit the size of the holes inside the bricks and a square thin container. Both packages are made from iron and filled with Paraffin (147 kJ/kg latent heat, 38℃ solid phase and 43℃ liquid phase) and closed in a way that prevents leakage. The experiments included constructing a cube-shaped zone from the sandwich panels material with a square hole (0.5m×0.5m) was made in one of its walls to place the test samples in it. The indoor test proceeded with 900W/m2 light intensity applied directly on the sample external surface. Four different samples named C1, C2, C3, and C4 have been used in this study. When compared to a traditional wall C1, the results showed that the heat flow was reduced by 35.7%, 17.4%, and 13.9% for C2, C3, and C4 respectively. All the models that included PCM got a reduction in temperature increases and a slowdown of thermal diffusion. Placing the PCM layer inside the brick holes achieved a maximum reduction in the heat flux compared to the reference model.