Integration of nano bio phase change materials for thermal energy management in buildings

Abstract

Population is increasingly enormously in metropolitan Cities. Ozone exhausting constituents are mostly transmitted from the mechanical cooling systems used for the building cooling application in metropolitan cities. For limiting this level, the major inevitable contribution of structures to the metropolitan cities will be by adopting green building technologies. The idea of green buildings concept is to enhance thermal comforts within the buildings with the concept of conservation of energies. In this context, cooling the building naturally by using phase change materials is expected to minimise the depletion of ozone exhausting gases. Regarding this, integrating Nano Enhanced Bio Phase Change Material (NeBPCM) into the buildings will be an innovating technology to minimise high potential thermal energies penetrations inside the buildings. The research focused on to develop suitable and sufficient heat storage for abating the heat transfer into the buildings. Hence, NeBPCM was prepared by solution casting method with the combination of Nano Material-Graphene, Biomaterial-Chitosan and PCM- Paraffin. The innovative integration of composite of NeBPCM was introduced into solid concrete hollow block (SCHB) of size 400mm x 200mm x 100mm. The two prototype experimental buildings of 1m x 1m x 1m were constructed for analysing the effects of temperature. In these two buildings, one building is constructed without any PCM encapsulation and another one is with encapsulation of PCM. It is found that the SS-NeBPCM encapsulations reduced the building room temperatures to a maximum average of 4.4°C during the month of May 2019 and a minimum average reduction of less than 5.3°C in the month of April 2019. The NeBPCM building also showed an increase in temperature of 1.2°C vis-à-vis the room without PCM on the lowest iv temperature day (23rd January 2019). Thus, the integration of PCM maintains the thermal comfort across the various seasons. newline