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，提高存储和传输能量的能力。低能耗建筑通常具有高度隔热的外立面，精心设计的采光和密闭建筑结构。然而，随着这些举措降低了能源使用量，进入的通风空气的空调在能源使用量中所占的比例变得明显更大。这为通过积极利用热质来进一步降低能源消耗提供了机会，尽管事实证明很难在用户要求的可控性下实现较低的能源舒适性。质量的存储容量和导热系数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配通道放置在靠近暴露的天花板表面和输入空气路径的位置，可以改善这种调节功率的不足。作为进一步的改进，添加了相变材料(PCM)的特性，以(1)创建能够根据居住者的需要提供更紧密的室内温度控制的更灵敏的输送系统。(2)减少运行中的一氧化碳排放，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.