Development of prototype using phase change materials to enhance active thermal mass energy storage in buildings to achieve low energy and comfortable indoor climates.

该项目旨在开发一种原型相变冷却产品，提高存储和转移能量的能力。低能耗建筑通常具有高度隔热的外墙，精心设计的采光和密闭的建筑结构。然而，由于这些举措降低了能源使用，进入通风空气的调节成为能源使用的一个显着更大的比例。这为通过积极使用热质量进一步降低能耗提供了机会，尽管实现低能耗舒适性和用户要求的可控性已被证明是困难的。存储容量和质量导热性的限制限制了此类系统处理更高负载或更极端温度的能力。通过将空气和流体分布通道靠近暴露的天花板表面和进入的空气路径，可以改善这种调节功率的不足。这最大限度地提高了系统快速影响被占用空间温度的能力。作为进一步的改进，相变材料（pcm）特性被添加到(1)创建一个响应更灵敏的输送系统，能够提供更紧密的室内温度控制，如居住者所期望的。(2)减少运行中的二氧化碳排放；(3)提供更强大的基于热质量的系统，能够与制冷剂空调系统竞争。

The project aims to develop a prototype phase change cooling product with increased abilityto store and transfer energy.Low energy buildings frequently feature highly insulated facades, carefully designed daylighting & airtight building construction. However, as these initiatives drive down energyusage, theconditioning of the incoming ventilation air becomes a significantly larger proportion of theenergy usage.This presents an opportunity to further reduce the energy consumption by actively usingthermal mass, although achieving low energy comfort with the controllability users requirehasproved difficult. The limitations of storage capacity & thermal conductivity of the mass, haverestricted the ability of such systems to deal with higher loads or more extreme temperatures.This lack of conditioning power can be improved by positioning air and fluid distributionchannels close to the exposed ceiling surface and the incoming air path. This maximises theability of the system to quickly influence the temperature of the occupied space.As a further improvement, phase change material (pcm) properties, are added to (1) create amore responsive delivery system able to provide closer indoor temperature control as desiredby occupants. (2) Reduce operating CO² emissions, 3) Provide more powerful thermal massbased systems able to compete with refrigerant air conditioning systems.