Recently climate change and global warming have raised many concerns, highlighting the necessity to reduce energy consumption associated with the building sector. HVAC accounts to almost 40% of the building’s energy consumption. Natural ventilation is the process of supplying and removing air through an indoor space by natural means. Windcatcher has been used over centuries for providing natural ventilation using wind power, it is an effective passive method to provide healthy and comfortable indoor environment by decreasing moisture content in the air and reducing pollutants concentration effectively. The windcatcher’s function is based on the wind and on the stack effect resulting from temperature differences, one of the draw backs of windcatchers is that it may not provide thermal comfort to occupants since the air introduced is at the same outdoor temperatures. Materials that change phase at certain temperature are frequently referred to as Phase Change Materials (PCMs). Phase Change Materials (PCM) are substances with high latent heat storage capacity which absorb or release the heat from or to the surrounding environment. PCMs change from solid to liquid during the day and vice versa during the night. PCMs could be used in passive cooling systems and they are directly related to building energy efficiency. In this study air flow through a two-dimensional room fitted with a windcatcher and incorporated with phase change materials (PCMs) is simulated. The temperature change in the room implementing PCM is analyzed to monitor the PCMs’ performance. To achieve this, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) tool is used to simulate the air flow through a two-dimensional room (3 m x 5 m) fitted with a windcatcher. Ansys Fluent is used to simulate the temperature changes inside the room as well as the melting process of PCM. The energy model as well as the solidification and melting model are used, and the K-Epsilon turbulence model is implemented. PCM is placed at the right and left walls of the room and at its bottom. Two cases have been considered (with and without PCM) and the average temperatures at three locations, near the right and left wall and at 1.2 m high, have been compared. The inlet velocity of air ranged from 1 m/s up to 5 m/s at different inlet temperatures of 302 K up to 350 K. The optimum distribution of phase change material is investigated to figure out when they can provide the best performance. The effect of the phase change material presence on the air flow pattern is also investigated.


Simulation of Ventilation Flow at Different Conditions Through a Two-Dimensional Room Incorporated With Phase Change Materials

Division / Sponsors: 
Aerospace, Bioengineering, Applied Mechanics, Design Engineering Division, Advanced Energy Systems, Manufacturing Engineering Division, Noise Control and Acoustics, Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (NDPD), Nuclear Engineering Division, Process Industries Division, Fluids Engineering, Heat Transfer, Materials, Microelectromechanical Systems, Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis, Computers & Information in Engineering


Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IMECE/IMECE2020/volume/84478

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