Dynamic simulation of strategies for thermal comfort using phase change materials

• Autor(a) principal: Caleiro, Luis Carlos Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/14382
• topic: Engenharia civil; Materiais de construção - Transformações de fase (Física estatística); Energia térmica; Armazenamento de energia; Consumo de energia - Edifícios; Eficiência energética - Edifícios; Climatização - Edifícios

Nowadays, as global warming becomes one of the most urgent problems in the world, there is a need to find better ways to utilize energy: not only in the field of energy production, transmission, distribution, and consumption, but also in the area of energy storage. With energy storage technologies, it is possible to overcome the contradiction between the energy production and consumption, alleviate the tense production load of power plants at peak hours, and reduce consumers’ electricity costs by avoiding higher peak hour tariffs. Thermal energy storage, or heat and cold storage, allows the storage of heat or cold to be used later. This method needs to be reversible so it allows for multiple cycles. The technology that was studied for this effect was Phase Change Materials or PCMs. With that in mind, and with the help of dynamic building simulation software, EnergyPlus, several scenarios of an existing build that has PCM incorporated were studied in order to ascertain the real effect the technology is having on the case study, including thermal comfort.