Enhanced heat transfer on thermo active cooling wall

Abstract

In the article a study of the cooling potential of thermo activated wall in an office building with enhanced convective heat transfer is presented. Heat transfer on a vertical cooled wall is enhanced by a longitude jet of supply fresh air from diffuser mounted parallel on the top of the wall. Such a system is compared to an adequate system with natural convection heat transfer from the cooled surface. Empirical models in the form of multicriterial polynoms for local and average convective heat transfer coefficients determination were developed for natural and enhanced convection using CFD techniques. Empirical models were used in the TRNSYS simulation tool for analyzing cooling potential increasing in the case of enhanced heat transfer on a cooled wall surface in a typical office. Results show a significant increase of the cooling load, a decrease of energy consumption for cooling of the office and better adaptive thermal comfort if heat transfer is enhanced with longitude jet of fresh supply air. © 2012 Journal of Mechanical Engineering.