Techno-Economic Assessment of an Air-Multiple PCM Active Storage Unit for Free Cooling Application

Muriel Iten
Additional contact information
Muriel Iten: Low Carbon and Resource Efficiency, R&Di, Instituto de Soldadura e Qualidade, 4415491 Grijó, Portugal

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 23, 1-10

Abstract: A latent energy storage (LES) unit is presented in this paper for free space cooling and ventilation application. The unit includes multiple phase change materials (PCM) to advance the thermal performance of common LES units. It is composed by metallic rectangular panels containing commercial paraffins with melting temperatures ranging among 20 °C and 25 °C and surrounded by air channels. The average cooling load of the unit corresponds to approximately 1 kW over 8 h. It fulfils the peak ventilation cooling load during summer of an office building in Portugal. The study provides a techno-economic analysis and the environmental benefits of the LES technology compared to a traditional air conditioning (AC) unit for the cooling and ventilation of an office building. During daytime, the air-multiple PCM unit allows reducing the energy consumption by nearly 200 kWh. The full charging of the PMs during nighttime, requires significant energy consumption due to the high air flowrate demand for full solidification. The competitiveness of such units can be achieved by introducing fins into the panels, allowing double the energy savings. In an overall perspective, the unit presents several benefits such as lower initial cost and reduced maintenance requirements (non-use of refrigerants and batteries) that also allows better personal health issues when related to traditional ACs.

Keywords: phase change materials; free cooling ventilation; techno-economic analysis; case study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/12936/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/12936/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:23:p:12936-:d:685480

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().