Customizable latent heat thermal energy storage and transfer system for air-cooling in buildings : design and thermal analysis

TL;DR: In this article, an air-PCM heat exchanger unit is designed and studied for thermal comfort assessment in buildings during summertime, providing tools to ease the design and building integration.

Abstract: The present work aims to design and study an air-PCM heat exchanger unit as a passive solution for thermal comfort assessment in buildings during summertime, providing tools to ease the design and building integration. The PCM present a large storage capacity per volume unit where by, they can contribute to the reduction of the energy consumption related to cooling applications. Although, theyshow some drawbacks, as a low thermal conductivity in commercial PCM, so a wellthought design of these kind of systems is necessary to achieve adequate thermal performances.The first part of this thesis surveys the existing systems through a literature review,highlighting the geometry relation with the physics and thermal performance. This search provided the bases for the development of an air-PCM unit design, following a problem-solving methodology developed by the I2M laboratory. A keyword matrix was obtained from the physical phenomena and functional analysis of the unit. From this matrix, the patents analysis provided inspiration for the design resulting in a tubebundle air-PCM heat exchanger with vertical tubes aligned perpendicular to the airflow.The development of design and integration in buildings tools was sought through a modeling that can accurately predict the thermal performance of the system.Simplified models are preferred for this task. Nevertheless, they can under predict the actual performance if the physical phenomena involved is not properly accounted. Then, local and global experimental approaches were used to achieve anunderstanding of the physics associated with charging and discharging cycles in theunit. For this, a test bench was installed, measuring temperature and airflow underdifferent in let conditions, accompanied by a visual tracking through digital images.Image and data processing were used to obtain thermal performance indicators and equivalent correlations using known dimensionless numbers for convective conductive heat transfer mechanisms in the PCM.These findings allowed the development of thermal models based on energy balances, that accounted the complexity of phenomena involved in the unit for performance prediction. Finally, the thermal performance of the system was tested intwo buildings applications: as a mobile unit in a PEH house in Gradignan and as anactive facade in a building in Talence.