Investigation of Multilayered Phase-Change- Material Modeling in ESP-R

ABSTRACT Phase change materials (PCMs) can be implemented into building practice to enhance thermal storage performance, reduce indoor temperature fluctuations and improve the thermal comfort of occupants. As building energy simulation is taking an ever larger role in the design and analysis of energy efficient buildings, it is important to understand the capabilities and performance of these tools. A popular and powerful building simulation program is ESP-r which is capable of incorporating the use of PCM into the thermal simulation. An effect of using multiple layers of PCM versus using a single layer was investigated. It was found that in general the application of PCM can significantly affect the thermal performance of the building. It was also shown that multilayered PCM demonstrated more realistic thermal benefit than single layer PCM in some cases. 1. INTRODUCTION Building energy consumption and its resulting greenhouse gas emissions can be substantially reduced if solar energy is adequately utilized. Storage of thermal energy in buildings has gained prominence in the past two decades due to a strong need to reduce the total thermal energy requirement (both heating and cooling) in buildings (Zalba