Development of phase change material (PCM) wallboard for building passive cooling applications

Ahmad Zulkafli, Muhammad Hazim (2023) Development of phase change material (PCM) wallboard for building passive cooling applications. Project Report. Melaka, Malaysia, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka. (Submitted)

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Abstract

Air-conditioning systems are used to fulfill the demand of cooling for building spaces worldwide. However, these vapor-compression refrigerantion systems consume a large amount of electricity. The processes to produce electricity can cause a huge impact to the environment such as climate change and global warming because of the CO₂ emissions. This lead to the necessity of developing new energy-efficient technology for air conditioning systems. The alternative method that presented in this study is by integrating phase change materials (PCM) into wallboards as structural building materials with additional latent heat storage capacity that can increase the thermal mass of the building materials. During daytime, PCM absorbed the heat gain by the wallboard and during night time the heat absorbed is rejected back to the surrounding. The fabrication of the wallboard employed V-shape slot method. Plastic also used to avoid leakage of the PCM from the wallboard. Eutectics PCM were made of the combination of coconut oil and paraffin wax. The melting temperature of eutectics PCM selected was 28°C which made of 90 wt% of coconut oil and 10 wt% of paraffin wax. This passive cooling technique could maintain the indoor temperature thus provides thermal comfort for the occupants and reduce the electric energy consumption in buildings. A PCM-integrated wallboards was fabricated according to the parameters to be investigated. The parameters are the mixing ratio of the eutectics PCM and the layer components of the wallboard. The wallboards consist of eutectics PCM, thermal sheet and aluminium foil. The overall size of the wallboard was 6” x 6” x 6” with total thickness of the wall was 3cm. The study aim is to evaluate the performance of the PCM-integrated wallboards in reducing indoor building temperature by applying heat load to cubicle PCM wallboard made from the wallboards as its main structural materials. The result shows that cubicle PCM wallboard can maintain the indoor temperature effectively. Day and night temperature tests for cubicle PCM wallboard were with different surrounding temperature i.e. 25C and 35C respectively. The temperature of cubicle PCM wallboard maintain the indoor temperature at 29.3C for 15 minutes and rise by 0.1C for every 5minutes. Meanwhile, the wallboard without PCM kept indoor temperature at 29.4°C for 10 minutes and keep increase about 0.1°C for every 5 minutes. For night temperature surrounding test at temperature of 24C, cubicle PCM wallboard can steadily maintain indoor space temperature within range of 26°C to 27°C. However, the indoor space temperature for cubicle wallboard without PCM kept decrease from 25.3°C to 23.3C. It can be conclude that PCM can effectively reduce the temperature fluctaution of indoor space at 26C - 28C within the human comfort temperature. This study proved that PCM can potentially be used as alternative solution for the conventional energy consumption of the compressor-driven refrigeration systems. The advantages of PCM are low maintanance required and energy free which makes it attractive and technically feasible for passive cooling systems in buildings.

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