Elsevier

Applied Energy

Volume 92, April 2012, Pages 593-605
Applied Energy

Review on thermal energy storage with phase change materials (PCMs) in building applications

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2011.08.025Get rights and content

Abstract

Thermal energy storage with phase change materials (PCMs) offers a high thermal storage density with a moderate temperature variation, and has attracted growing attention due to its important role in achieving energy conservation in buildings with thermal comfort. Various methods have been investigated by previous researchers to incorporate PCMs into the building structures, and it has been found that with the help of PCMs the indoor temperature fluctuations can be reduced significantly whilst maintaining desirable thermal comfort. This paper summarises previous works on latent thermal energy storage in building applications, covering PCMs, the impregnation methods, current building applications and their thermal performance analyses, as well as numerical simulation of buildings with PCMs. Over 100 references are included in this paper.

Highlights

► Investigations on thermal energy storage with PCMs in building applications are reviewed. ► The technologies of PCMs, including selection criteria, measurement methods and heat transfer enhancement, are summarised. ► Impregnation methods of PCMs into construction materials and their applications are also discussed. ► Numerical studies on thermal performance of buildings with PCMs are evaluated.

Introduction

Energy and environment are the two major issues facing human beings nowadays. Industrial developments and population boom in the past few centuries have resulted in an enormous increase in energy demand with an annual increasing rate at about 2.3%. Fig. 1a and b, respectively, show the energy production from the year 1949 to 2009 and primary energy flow for the year 2009 in the United States [1]. From which we can see that on average, fossil fuels account for almost 80% of the total energy production. However the burning of fossil fuels brought the largest environmental issue ever, which is climate change caused by CO2 emission. Still taking the United States as an example, the combustion of fossil fuels is responsible for more than 90% of all greenhouse gas emissions [2]. On this occasion, scientists had begun to research in renewable energy technologies in order to turn the tide of climate change and achieve a sustainable development for human beings.

Building is one of the leading sectors of the energy consumption. In the year of 2009, around 40% of the total fossil energy was consumed in building sector in the United States and European Union [1]. Furthermore the energy consumption of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems is still increasing with the increasing demand for thermal comfort. Under this circumstance, thermal energy storage systems with high potential to save energy in buildings have gained more and more attention. Thermal energy storage can be generally classified as sensible heat storage and latent heat storage according to the heat storage media. In sensible heat storage, the heat is stored or released accompanied with temperature change of the storage media, whereas in the latent heat storage the heat is stored or released as heat of fusion/solidification during phase change processes of the storage media. By contrast, latent heat storage with phase change materials (PCMs) provides a high heat storage density and has the capability of storing a large amount of heat during the phase change process with a small variation of PCM volume and temperature.

Using latent heat storage in the buildings can meet the demand for thermal comfort and energy conservation purpose. This review paper mainly focuses on latent thermal energy storage in building applications with Section 2 about the catalog of previous resources, Section 3 about PCMs, Section 4 about impregnation PCMs into conventional construction materials, Section 5 about the current building applications and thermal performance, as well as Section 6 about the numerical simulation for passive solar heating buildings with PCMs.

Section snippets

Summary of resources

Since the importance of sustainable energy has been noticed, many books on energy storage have been appeared; among of them few books [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] are mainly on low-temperature latent thermal energy storage. Dincer and Rosen [7] gave a general description of thermal energy storage, from the definition of fundamental parameters, thermal energy storage methods, energy and exergy analyses as well as numerical model and simulation of thermal energy storage. But in these books, the PCMs

Classification

Based on phase change state, PCMs fall into three groups: solid–solid PCMs, solid–liquid PCMs and liquid–gas PCMs. Among them the solid–liquid PCMs are most suitable for thermal energy storage. The solid–liquid PCMs comprise organic PCMs, inorganic PCMs and eutectics, seen in Fig. 2. A comparison of these different kinds of PCMs is listed in Table 2.

Criteria of PCMs selection

The melting temperature and phase change enthalpy of existing PCMs are shown in Fig. 3 [21]. From the point of melting temperature it can be seen

Traditional methods

Hawes et al. [43] reported that the three most promising methods of PCMs to be incorporated in the conventional construction materials were direct incorporation, immersion and encapsulation. They also found that the melting and freezing temperatures of PCMs varied slightly when being incorporated in building materials.

PCM wallboard

PCM wallboard is considered to be an effective and less costly replacement of standard thermal mass to store solar heat in buildings, in which the PCM is imbedded into a gypsum board, plaster or other building structures. The thermal characteristics of PCM wallboard are very close to those of PCMs alone, and when a PCM wallboard is cut, a greater concentration of PCM lies in the outer third of the wallboard thickness near each face due to the diffusion process [52].

Scalat et al. [55] considered

Parameters for evaluation

Thermal resistance R, heat storage coefficient S and index of thermal inertia D are considered to be the most commonly used parameters to evaluate the thermal performance of the buildings.

Conclusion

In this paper, previous research works on thermal energy storage with PCMs for building applications have been reviewed. The PCMs to be used in buildings need to meet thermal comfort criteria, meaning the phase change temperature of PCMs should be between 18 °C and 30 °C. In addition, the properties such as chemical stability, fire characteristics and compatibility with constructional materials also need to be considered in the PCMs selections. Latent heat storage with PCMs has been used in the

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC grant number: EP/F061439/1) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos: 51176110 and 51071184).

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