A thermo-activated wall for load reduction and supplementary cooling with free to low-cost thermal water

Yuebin Yu, Fuxin Niu, Heinz-Axel Guo and Denchai Woradechjumroen

Energy, 2016, vol. 99, issue C, 250-265

Abstract: A building envelope serves as a thermal barrier and plays an important role in determining the amount of energy used to achieve a comfortable indoor environment. Conventionally, it is constructed and treated as a passive component in a building thermal energy system. In this article, a novel, mini-tube capillary-network embedded and thermal-water activated building envelope is proposed to turn the passive component into active, therefore broaden the direct utilization of low-grade thermal energy in buildings. With this proposed approach, low-grade thermal water at a medium temperature close to the ambient environment can be potentially utilized to either counterbalance the thermal load or indirectly heat and cool the space. With the revealing of the idea, effects of water temperature and flow rate on the envelope's thermal performance are investigated using a transient model. The results indicate that the thermo-activated wall can be effective in stabilizing the internal surface temperature, offsetting the heat gain, and supplying cooling energy to the space in summer. Utilization of the innovation should take the cost of total energy, energy benefit and efficiency into consideration. This article illustrates how low-grade energy can be actively used as a means for achieving net-zero energy buildings.

Keywords: Thermo-activated; Building envelope; Capillary network; Renewable energy; Low-grade energy; Energy saving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544216000815
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:energy:v:99:y:2016:i:c:p:250-265

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2016.01.051

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().