Thermal performance and energy efficiency of building integrated with PCMs in hot desert climate region

Abstract

Researchers have used phase change materials to reduce energy cost, dependency on fossil fuels and make the buildings energy efficient. However, the following issues have not been addressed yet. (a) How PCM influence the thermal performance and energy efficiency of PCM integrated buildings with local construction details in hot desert climate? (b) How energy savings in PCM integrated buildings are related to meteorological factors such as wind speed, temperature and relative humidity? (c) What is the economic and environmental impact of PCM integrated buildings located in BWh climate? Hence, the thermal performance and energy efficiency performance of PCM integrated residential building located in eight different cities (Abu-Dhabi, Dubai, Faisalabad, Mecca, Jodhpur, Nouakchott, Cairo and Biskra) from hot desert climate zone was evaluated with thirteen different PCMs in EnergyPlus. Test results showed that the optimum PCMs were able to reduce the temperature fluctuations and the maximum temperature reduced by up to 2.04 °C. Except for Cairo and Biskra, the best PCM were close to the cooling set point suggesting that in hot desert climate, PCM with higher melting points perform better. For selected cities, the energy consumption reduction varied from 17.97 to 34.26% while for a given volume of PCM, energy efficiency increased with the increase in the surface area and decrease in the thickness of PCM layer. From multiple regression analysis, the equation describing the dependency of energy saving on meteorological parameters was obtained. Conclusively, economical and environmental aspects of the incorporation of PCM in a residential building located in a hot desert climate were discussed.