Abstract
Phase change material (PCM)-enhanced building envelopes can control indoor temperatures and save energy. However, PCM needs to undergo a phase change transition from solid to liquid and back to be fully effective. Furthermore, most previous research integrated PCM with high embodied energy materials. This study aims to advance the existing research on integrating PCM into carbon-negative wall assemblies composed of hempcrete and applying temperature control strategies to improve wall systems’ performance while considering the hysteresis phenomenon. Four hempcrete and hempcrete-PCM (HPCM) wall design configurations were simulated and compared under different control strategies designed to reduce energy demand while enhancing the phase change transition of the microencapsulated PCM. The HPCM wall types outperformed the hempcrete wall assembly through heating (~3–7%) and cooling (~7.8–20.7%) energy savings. HPCM walls also maintained higher wall surface temperatures during the coldest days, lower during the warmest days, and within a tighter range than hempcrete assembly, thus improving the thermal comfort. However, the results also show that the optimal performance of thermal energy storage materials requires temperature controls that facilitate their charge and discharge. Hence, applied control strategies reduced heating and cooling energy demand in the range of ~4.4–21.5% and ~14.5–55%, respectively.
Highlights
Because of the microencapsulated phase change material’s (MPCM) high price, negative impact on the mechanical properties [42], and hindering effect on energy savings when used in higher percentages [40], HPCM infill consists of approximately 9% MPCM (Nextek 18D)
HPCM30, under the the corresponding percentage savings of the four wall types, hempcrete, HPCM10, wall types reduced energy consumption compared to the hempcrete wall
Under the base case (BC: 20–24 ◦ C) schedule, HPCM wall types had between 3% and 7.5%
Summary
Latent heat storage systems with phase change materials (PCMs) are promising technology capable of storing and releasing significant quantities of heat per unit of mass through a phase change from liquid to solid and back near room temperature [1,2]. The PCM can better control indoor temperatures and save energy by absorbing part of a building’s heat load during the daytime as it melts and releasing this heat during the cooler nighttime as it returns to its solid phase. PCMs are typically embedded into the building fabrics of walls, floors, roofs, fenestration, façade, shutter, and shading systems without relying on auxiliary equipment, which increases the envelope’s thermal storage capacity [1,2]. PCM is integrated into the building fabrics through different approaches such as PCM-enhanced covering materials, including plasterboards, wallboards or gypsum boards [3,4,5], concrete [6,7], ceramics [8,9], microencapsulated PCM panels [10,11,12], multi PCM structure [13,14,15,16], and PCM-impregnated insulations [17,18,19]
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