Passive building walls

Abstract

The heat flows through the building envelopes take a large part in the cooling or heating load of a room. Therefore, the thermal performances of building envelopes have a significant influence on the heating or cooling energy consumption in buildings. In this chapter, several passive building walls in building envelopes are introduced, with more attention on phase change material (PCM) walls and green walls. The benefits of PCM walls and the PCM containment in building walls are first summarized, and then the experimental and numerical research studies on the optimal PCM location in the wall are presented. In addition, the energy-saving potentials of green walls are discussed, and their functions of improving air quality are also analyzed.