Temperature Regulation of Buildings with the Application of Phase Change Materials

Abstract

In the last hundred years the Earth has warmed by about 0.5oC. There is strong indication that this is due to an increase in the concentrations of certain trace greenhouse gases. Major amongst these is carbon dioxide which is produced whenever fossil fuels are burnt to obtain energy. Globally, energy use, and the associated carbon dioxide emissions, has been rising rapidly over the past few decades. Industry, transportation and building are the three major energy consuming sectors, in which the buildings sector having the largest share and the largest energy conservation potential. Phase change materials (PCMs) are the materials that could store a large amount of energy in the form of latent heat at a constant temperature without any fluctuations or variations in the temperature. This property of the PCMs finds its usage in many fields conserving energy to a greater extent. The major application of the PCMs is in the building construction where it is used in several ways to maintain either a constant temperature in the interior of the building or to store a large amount of solar radiation as latent heat energy in it. In present investigation an experimental study is carried out in a test cell with and without PCMs. The main discussion was made on the ruling of inner temperature fluctuations along with the maximum energy of solar radiation that could be stored and retrieved later.