Towards Sustainable Development: Building’s Retrofitting with PCMs to Enhance the Indoor Thermal Comfort in Tropical Climate, Malaysia
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Simulation Investigation
2.2. Building Model
2.3. PCMs Application
- Thermal comfort time (TCT), if Tₒₚ is below or equal to 28 °C,
- relative thermal comfort time (RTCT), if Tₒₚ is above 28 °C and below or equal to 30 °C,
- thermal discomfort time (TDT), if Tₒₚ is above 30 °C.
3. Results and Discussion
3.1. Optimization Study
3.2. PCMs Performance Year-Round
4. Conclusions
- PCMs application showed effectiveness in reducing the Tₒₚ profile, which improved the TCT in buildings and managed to decrease the TDT completely.
- Better performance was observed when using PCMs with lower transition temperatures and higher quantities.
- Combining NV with PCMs improves their performance and effectiveness. Therefore, higher TCT and lower TDT were achieved. The effect of NV was observed more in PCMs with lower transition temperatures.
- In the investigated conditions, the optimum performance was achieved with an 18mm layer of PCM27-26, which increased the TCT to 78% (i.e., 45% more TCT) and decreased the TDT to 1% (i.e., 33% less TDT) for the year-round.
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Reference | Building | Main Findings (°C) | |
---|---|---|---|
[12] | Chamber | Neutral temp. (Tᵢ) | 28.3 |
Comfort temp. (Tᵢ) | 28.2 | ||
Comfort zone (Tᵢ) | 25 to 28.5~29.5 | ||
Malays Comfort temp. (Tᵢ) | 28.7 | ||
Chinese Comfort temp. (Tᵢ) | 27.6 | ||
[13] | Naturally ventilated | Neutral temp. (Tₒₚ) method1 | 30.93 |
Neutral temp. (Tₒₚ) method2 | 29.87 | ||
[14] | Non-air-conditioned | Neutral temp. (Tₒₚ) | 28.4 |
Acceptable range (Tₒₚ) | 26.0 to 30.7 | ||
Air-conditioned | Neutral temp. (Tₒₚ) | 24.4 | |
Acceptable range (Tₒₚ) | 23.1 to 25.6 | ||
[15] | Non-air-conditioned | Neutral temp. (Tᵢ) | 30.1~30.2 |
Acceptable range (Tᵢ) | 27.0 to 32.5 | ||
[16] | Air-conditioned | Mean comfort temp. (Tₒₚ) | 25.7 |
Acceptable range (Tₒₚ) | 24.5 to 30.0 |
Thermal Comfort Model | Estimated Comfort Temperature and Comfort Range (°C) | ||
---|---|---|---|
[8] | ASHRAE Standard 55 | Upper acceptable temp. (Tₒₚ) | 29.98 |
Upper acceptable temp. (Tₒₚ) with higher airspeed: | |||
0.6 m/s | 31.18 | ||
0.9 m/s | 31.78 | ||
1.2 m/s | 32.18 | ||
[17] | BS EN 15251 | Comfort temp. (Tₒₚ) | 28.04 |
Acceptable range (Tₒₚ): | |||
Category I | 26.04 to 30.04 | ||
Category II | 25.04 to 31.04 | ||
Category III | 24.04 to 32.04 | ||
[18] | MS 2680 | Comfort temp. (Tᵢ) | 29.76 |
Study | Max-Tᵢ | Min-Tᵢ | Tₒ |
---|---|---|---|
Kubota et al. [19] | 34 | 26.8 | 28 (Avg.) |
Tuck et al. [6] | 33–37 | 27 | 28 ± 2 (Avg.) |
Omar and Fadzil [20] | 32 | 29 | 27.8–30 |
Djamila et al. [15] | 35.3 | 26.5 | - |
Hafizal et al. [23] | 35.5 | - | - |
Omar and Syed-Fadzil [21] | 31 | 28.5 | 25.5–32 |
Hassan and Ramli [22] | 34.3 | 27.3 | 27.3–34.5 |
Parameter | Recommendation | Used Value |
---|---|---|
Time steps | - Should be “3 min” or shorter as [41,55]. - Evola et al. [56] found no changes by using lower time steps than “2 min”. | 2 min |
Space discretization constant | - Determines the number of nodes used to represent each material layer in the construction. - Suggested to be “3” or lower [41,55]. - Used by Wijesuriya et al. [40] as “3”. | 3 |
Relaxation factor | - Improve stability for interaction with other surfaces. - Larger values can be faster, while lower values are more stable. - Suggested and used value in [40,55] was “1”. - EnergyPlus may reduce the entered value to a lower one for more stability if numerical instability was detected [54,55]. | 1 |
Inside face surface temperature convergence criteria | - Provides more stability for the surface heat balance when dealing with the maximum allowable temperature differences for the inside face surface temperature [54,55]. - The suggested value for PCMs modelling is “0.01”. | 0.01 |
Item | Description | Conductivity (W/m-K) | Total Thickness (mm) | U-Value (W/m2-K) |
---|---|---|---|---|
External walls | External cement render | 1.00 | 130 | 3.398 |
Concrete wall | 1.13 | |||
Internal cement plaster | 0.72 | |||
Internal partitions | Cement plaster | 0.72 | 126 | 2.299 |
Brick wall | 0.72 | |||
Cement plaster | 0.72 | |||
Floor | Tiles | 1.30 | 110 | 2.86 |
Concrete slab | 1.40 | |||
Glazing | Single Grey glass 6mm + Aluminum Frame | 0.9 | 6 | 6.121 |
Temperature (°C) | Thermal Conductivity (W/m K) | Latent Heat (j/g) | Specific Heat (j/kg K) | Density (kg/m3) | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Melting | Solidification | Solid | Liquid | ||||
PCM30-29 | 30 | 29 | 1.09 | 0.54 | 200 | 3.14 | 1540 |
PCM29-28 | 29 | 28 | |||||
PCM28-27 | 28 | 27 | |||||
PCM27-26 | 27 | 26 |
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Al-Absi, Z.A.; Hafizal, M.I.M.; Ismail, M.; Ghazali, A. Towards Sustainable Development: Building’s Retrofitting with PCMs to Enhance the Indoor Thermal Comfort in Tropical Climate, Malaysia. Sustainability 2021, 13, 3614. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073614
Al-Absi ZA, Hafizal MIM, Ismail M, Ghazali A. Towards Sustainable Development: Building’s Retrofitting with PCMs to Enhance the Indoor Thermal Comfort in Tropical Climate, Malaysia. Sustainability. 2021; 13(7):3614. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073614
Chicago/Turabian StyleAl-Absi, Zeyad Amin, Mohd Isa Mohd Hafizal, Mazran Ismail, and Azhar Ghazali. 2021. "Towards Sustainable Development: Building’s Retrofitting with PCMs to Enhance the Indoor Thermal Comfort in Tropical Climate, Malaysia" Sustainability 13, no. 7: 3614. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073614