Impact of a Composite Trombe Wall Incorporating Phase Change Materials on the Thermal Behavior of an Individual House with Low Energy Consumption

Abstract

As the heating demands of buildings drop considerably, the use of solar walls makes increasing sense. One of the obstacles to the development of such walls is their need for on-site implementation by specialized companies. On the other hand, a storage wall is generally composed of heavy materials with high inertia, which prevents prefabrication of the solar component. To avoid this problem and allow for solar walls to be prefabricated in the factory, a novel approach to replacing this heavy wall with a lighter storage wall incorporating phase change materials (PCM) has been proposed. This paper aims to demonstrate the impact of PCM on the thermal energy performance once they have been integrated into the storage wall of the composite Trombe wall. Addressed herein will be the heat transfer exchange inside a house located in the northern part of France, where a composite Trombe wall has been fitted without PCM. Three configurations will be investigated—(1) the model house without the solar Trombe wall, defined as the reference configuration; (2) the model house integrating the concrete solar Trombe wall; and (3) the model house integrating the PCM solar Trombe wall. Two setpoint temperatures will be introduced—(a) a constant setpoint of 20 °C, and (b) a variable setpoint of 19 °C (14 h from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.) and 16 °C (10 h from 9:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.). Furthermore, three different climate conditions will be adopted to run simulations—Paris-Orly, Lyon, and Nice. Dymola/Modelica, a dynamic thermal simulation tool, will be utilized to simulate the thermal performance of these defined configurations. The results obtained, regarding a solar Trombe wall installation that applies two distinct storage walls exposed to the weather of Paris, showed similar minimizations of the one-year energy heating demand inside the bedroom, equal to roughly 20% (i.e., 20.45% of concrete storage wall and 19.90% of PCM storage wall) compared to the reference configuration (i.e., the house with no solar Trombe wall). Based on the imposed setpoint temperature by means of night and day reductions, the resulting heating energy demand in the bedroom, through application of the two storage walls (concrete and PCM) and three different climatic regions could be minimized by 20.34% in Paris, 20.20% in Lyon, and 68.10% in Nice (for the concrete storage wall) vs. the reference configuration; and by 18.79% in Paris, 19.56% in Lyon, and 55.15% in Nice (for the PCM storage wall) vs. the reference configuration.