Analyses of Phase Change Materials’ Efficiency in Warm-Summer Humid Continental Climate Conditions
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering 2017
Jānis Ratnieks, S. Gendelis, Andris Jakovics, Diāna Bajāre

The usage of phase change materials (PCMs) is a way to store excess energy produced during the hot time of the day and release it during the night thereby reducing the overheating problem. While, in Latvian climate conditions overheating is not a big issue in traditional buildings since it happens only a couple of weeks per year air conditioners must still be installed to maintain thermal comfort. The need for cooling in recently built office buildings with large window area can increase significantly. It is therefore of great interest if the thermal comfort conditions can be maintained by PCMs alone or with reduced maximum power of installed cooling systems. Our initial studies show that if the test building is well-insulated (necessary to reduce heat loss in winter), phase change material is not able to solidify fast enough during the relatively short night time. To further investigate the problem various experimental setups with two different phase change materials were installed in test buildings. Experimental results are compared with numerical modelling made in software COMSOL Multiphysics. The effectiveness of PCM using different situations is widely analysed.


Keywords
phase change materials
DOI
10.1088/1757-899X/251/1/012119
Hyperlink
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/251/1/012119/meta

Ratnieks, J., Gendelis, S., Jakovics, A., Bajāre, D. Analyses of Phase Change Materials’ Efficiency in Warm-Summer Humid Continental Climate Conditions. In: IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, Latvia, Riga, 27-29 September, 2017. Riga: IOP Publishing, 2017, pp.1-9. ISSN 1757-8981. e-ISSN 1757-899X. Available from: doi:10.1088/1757-899X/251/1/012119

Publication language
English (en)
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