Performance of a window shutter with phase change material under summer Mediterranean climate conditions

Abstract

The building sector is the largest final end-use consumer of energy in the European Union. Substantial heat losses in buildings occur through glazing areas, so it is crucial to mitigate the energy transfer between through these areas. The use of phase change materials (PCMs) is presently a technology advanced solution to improve the energy performance of building elements, particularly with window blinds or shutter protections.This paper presents the results of an experimental campaign of a window shutter containing PCM during the summer season. The shutter prototype was applied in an outside cell test composed by two compartments (side by side) and oriented to South. It was monitored and analysed the indoor air temperatures, the outside weather conditions and the heat flux of the interior wall partition.During the experiment, the range of the external air temperature changes from 13 °C to 25 °C and the average solar radiation recorded is 237 W m−2 to 306 W m−2. The measured results shows that the compartment with the PCM window shutter can reveals thermal regulating capacity of the indoor temperature about 18%–22%. The maximum and minimum temperature peaks decreased 6% and 11%, respectively. Besides the improvement of the indoor temperatures, the compartment with PCM increased 45 min the time delay to achieve the minimum temperature peak and 60 min to attain the maximum temperature peak, compared to the reference compartment (without PCM).