Experimental evaluation of a radiant floor system incorporating macroencapsulated phase change materials for improved heating and cooling performance

Given the latent heat storage capacity and high energy density of Phase Change Materials, their incorporation into radiant floors has gained relevance. Capable of acting as thermal batteries in Radiant Floor Systems, phase change materials increase the thermal inertia of the system. However, when incorporating phase change materials into radiant floors, the configuration of the system becomes extremely relevant, constituting one of the main lines of research in the literature. Despite this interest, there are still few large-scale experimental studies dedicated to the thermal performance of radiant floors incorporating phase change materials. Therefore, a new configuration for a hydronic radiant floor system incorporating phase change materials is proposed in this paper. The thermal performance is experimentally evaluated under controlled conditions using a large-scale apparatus in a climatic chamber. The new radiant floor system configuration incorporates two macroencapsulated phase change material solutions. To address winter and summer environmental conditions, the radiant floor system incorporating phase change materials was tested under different heating and cooling scenarios. A reference radiant floor system was used for comparison. The radiant floor system incorporating phase change materials demonstrated superior performance by reaching higher temperatures under heating operation and lower ones under cooling. After the systems were switched off, the novel radiant floor system configuration stood out, being capable of slowly releasing the accumulated thermal energy of the incorporated phase change materials, resulting in attenuated temperature decrease with low cooling drop and a cascade-like profile. The discharge times confirmed the improved thermal performance of the proposed configuration.