The Effects of Using a Trombe Wall Modified with a Phase Change Material, from the Perspective of a Building’s Life Cycle

Abstract

The increasing costs related to the use of primary energy carriers, and greater social awareness related to the need for energy saving, necessitate the use of renewable energy sources, including solar radiation. The Trombe wall (thermal storage wall—TSW) is an indirect passive solar energy system solution, aimed at obtaining, storing, and transferring thermal energy into buildings. However, there is no comprehensive information on the impact of the use of such solutions on environmental performance in the life cycle of buildings, especially those located in temperate climates. The aim of this paper is therefore to determine the environmental impact of the construction of barriers using phase change materials (PCM) from the perspective of the life cycle of a model building conforming to the current Polish energy standard (EP < 70 kWh/(m2∙yr)). The subject of the research is the structure of a TSW using phase change materials and a reference wall with a maximum overall heat transfer coefficient of 0.2 W/m2K. A comprehensive computational model of a residential building located in Rzeszów, Poland, was created, taking into account the thermal parameters of the analyzed structure of the wall and its operation under real, specific climatic conditions, as well as the environmental characteristics. High-quality input data (based on real, long-term measurements) were used to conduct a Life Cycle Assessment of the analyzed variants. As a result, the energetic and environmental efficiency of the analyzed thermal storage wall, from the perspective of the whole building’s life cycle, were assessed. According to the analyzed data, a TSW modified with paraffin enables the reduction of the energy requirements for heating by 11.3%, and the payback period of the environmental load does not exceed 1 (GWP) and 5 (IMPACT2002+) years, which were lower than the monitored period of operation.