Evaluación de materiales de cambio de fase en zonas climáticas del Ecuador

Abstract

Nowadays, the building sector aims to improve the thermal comfort and to reduce the energy consumption implementing new alternative systems. For this purpose, a new phase change material (PCM) is being studied to analyze performance of a building in three different climates of Ecuador by using a simulation tool.

This work assesses the PCM performance used as part of a building envelops through a virtual model in Design Builder. To improve reliability of simulation results, model is calibrated with experimental previous existing data of a building, which is a monitoring room without occupancy.

The virtual model includes PCM in the roof and walls of the virtual calibrated model.  The prime matter of PCM is found in Ecuador and thermal and chemical characteristics were product of a previous study. On the other hand, this study assesses annual thermal comfort by using the predicted mean vote (PMV). The original model and PCM results are compared by the total time of thermal comfort during a year in three Ecuadorian cities.

The results shows that the use of a PCM into a building located in Quito increase the thermal comfort hours, since the PMC decrease the air temperature fluctuation decrease throughout the year. However, the use of PCM in Zumbahua represents a disadvantage because the climate conditions do not allow storing energy by PCM as latent heat. In Guayaquil, the impact of the the PCM use in the envelope can be useful when a HVAC equipment is used since the maximum thermal load is reduced resulting in energy savings by equipment operation.