IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v16y2023i17p6127-d1222962.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Phase-Change Material Thermal Energy Storage for the Smart Retrofitting of Existing Buildings

Author

Listed:
  • Eneja Osterman

    (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia)

  • Claudio Del Pero

    (Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, Polytechnical University of Milan, 20133 Milano, Italy)

  • Eva Zavrl

    (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia)

  • Fabrizio Leonforte

    (Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, Polytechnical University of Milan, 20133 Milano, Italy)

  • Niccolò Aste

    (Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, Polytechnical University of Milan, 20133 Milano, Italy)

  • Uroš Stritih

    (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Abstract

This article presents the use of phase-change material (PCM) thermal storage within the Horizon 2020 HEART project (Holistic Energy and Architectural Retrofit Toolkit), aimed at decarbonising the European building sector through the retrofitting of existing structures into energy-efficient smart buildings. These buildings not only reduce energy consumption, but also incorporate advanced technologies for harnessing green energy, thereby promoting environmental sustainability. The HEART project employs state-of-the-art technologies for electricity production/dispatching and heat generation/storage, managed by a cloud-based platform for the real-time monitoring of parameters and optimising energy utilisation, enabling users to control their environmental comfort. The article provides a detailed examination of one of the project’s demonstration sites in Italy, focusing on various components such as heat pumps, photovoltaic systems (PV), controllers, and particularly emphasising the significance of storage tanks. The study involved the measurement and analysis of three heat storage tanks, each with a total volume of 3000 L. These tanks utilised PCM modules for latent heat storage, significantly enhancing overall heat accumulation. Water served as the heat transfer fluid within the tanks. Through meticulous calculations, the article quantifies the accumulated heat and presents a comparative evaluation between PCM-based storage tanks and conventional water tanks, showcasing the advantages of PCM technology in terms of increased heat retention and efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Eneja Osterman & Claudio Del Pero & Eva Zavrl & Fabrizio Leonforte & Niccolò Aste & Uroš Stritih, 2023. "Phase-Change Material Thermal Energy Storage for the Smart Retrofitting of Existing Buildings," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(17), pages 1-13, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:17:p:6127-:d:1222962
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/17/6127/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/17/6127/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Oró, E. & de Gracia, A. & Castell, A. & Farid, M.M. & Cabeza, L.F., 2012. "Review on phase change materials (PCMs) for cold thermal energy storage applications," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 513-533.
    2. Zauner, Christoph & Windholz, Bernd & Lauermann, Michael & Drexler-Schmid, Gerwin & Leitgeb, Thomas, 2020. "Development of an Energy Efficient Extrusion Factory employing a latent heat storage and a high temperature heat pump," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    3. Kutlu, Cagri & Zhang, Yanan & Elmer, Theo & Su, Yuehong & Riffat, Saffa, 2020. "A simulation study on performance improvement of solar assisted heat pump hot water system by novel controllable crystallization of supercooled PCMs," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 601-612.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Du, Ruxue & Wu, Minqiang & Wang, Siqi & Wu, Si & Wang, Ruzhu & Li, Tingxian, 2022. "Experimental investigation on high energy-density and power-density hydrated salt-based thermal energy storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 325(C).
    2. Kousksou, T. & El Rhafiki, T. & Jamil, A. & Bruel, P. & Zeraouli, Y., 2013. "PCMs inside emulsions: Some specific aspects related to DSC (differential scanning calorimeter)-like configurations," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 175-183.
    3. Wang, X.J. & Li, X.F. & Xu, Y.H. & Zhu, D.S., 2014. "Thermal energy storage characteristics of Cu–H2O nanofluids," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 212-217.
    4. Pitié, F. & Zhao, C.Y. & Baeyens, J. & Degrève, J. & Zhang, H.L., 2013. "Circulating fluidized bed heat recovery/storage and its potential to use coated phase-change-material (PCM) particles," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 505-513.
    5. Cong Zhou & Yizhen Li & Fenghao Wang & Zeyuan Wang & Qing Xia & Yuping Zhang & Jun Liu & Boyang Liu & Wanlong Cai, 2023. "A Review of the Performance Improvement Methods of Phase Change Materials: Application for the Heat Pump Heating System," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(6), pages 1-21, March.
    6. Sun, Xiaoqin & Zhang, Quan & Medina, Mario A. & Liao, Shuguang, 2015. "Performance of a free-air cooling system for telecommunications base stations using phase change materials (PCMs): In-situ tests," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 325-334.
    7. Rostami, Sara & Afrand, Masoud & Shahsavar, Amin & Sheikholeslami, M. & Kalbasi, Rasool & Aghakhani, Saeed & Shadloo, Mostafa Safdari & Oztop, Hakan F., 2020. "A review of melting and freezing processes of PCM/nano-PCM and their application in energy storage," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    8. Shi, X.J. & Zhang, P., 2013. "A comparative study of different methods for the generation of tetra-n-butyl ammonium bromide clathrate hydrate slurry in a cold storage air-conditioning system," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 1393-1402.
    9. Wang, Ting & Qiu, Xiaolin & Chen, Xiaojing & Lu, Lixin & Zhou, Binglin, 2022. "Sponge-like form-stable phase change materials with embedded graphene oxide for enhancing the thermal storage efficiency and the temperature response in transport packaging applications," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 325(C).
    10. Fan, Li-Wu & Yao, Xiao-Li & Wang, Xiao & Wu, Yu-Yue & Liu, Xue-Ling & Xu, Xu & Yu, Zi-Tao, 2015. "Non-isothermal crystallization of aqueous nanofluids with high aspect-ratio carbon nano-additives for cold thermal energy storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 193-201.
    11. Rendall, Joseph & Elatar, Ahmed & Nawaz, Kashif & Sun, Jian, 2023. "Medium-temperature phase change material integration in domestic heat pump water heaters for improved thermal energy storage," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    12. Li, Xinyi & Ma, Ting & Liu, Jun & Zhang, Hao & Wang, Qiuwang, 2018. "Pore-scale investigation of gravity effects on phase change heat transfer characteristics using lattice Boltzmann method," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 92-103.
    13. Enescu, Diana & Virjoghe, Elena Otilia, 2014. "A review on thermoelectric cooling parameters and performance," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 903-916.
    14. Cristiana Croitoru & Florin Bode & Răzvan Calotă & Charles Berville & Matei Georgescu, 2024. "Harnessing Nanomaterials for Enhanced Energy Efficiency in Transpired Solar Collectors: A Review of Their Integration in Phase-Change Materials," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-18, March.
    15. Sitong Liu & Huanmei Yuan & Dengti Hu & Tonghe Li & Hao Bai, 2024. "Effect of Dropping Speed of Reducing Agent on the Preparation of LA/Ag Phase-Change Nanocapsules," Energies, MDPI, vol. 17(4), pages 1-12, February.
    16. Cao, Fangyu & Yang, Bao, 2014. "Supercooling suppression of microencapsulated phase change materials by optimizing shell composition and structure," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1512-1518.
    17. Haiming Long & Yunkun Lu & Liang Chang & Haifeng Zhang & Jingcen Zhang & Gaoqun Zhang & Junjie Hao, 2022. "Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Thermophysical Properties and the Microstructure of Na 2 CO 3 Heat Storage Materials," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-13, September.
    18. Lillo-Bravo, I. & Bobadilla, M.A. & Moreno-Tejera, S. & Silva-Pérez, M., 2020. "A novel storage system for cooling stand-alone photovoltaic installations," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 23-37.
    19. Hussein J. Akeiber & Seyed Ehsan Hosseini & Mazlan A. Wahid & Hasanen M. Hussen & Abdulrahman Th. Mohammad, 2016. "Phase Change Materials-Assisted Heat Flux Reduction: Experiment and Numerical Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-17, January.
    20. Fong, Matthew & Alzoubi, Mahmoud A. & Kurnia, Jundika C. & Sasmito, Agus P., 2019. "On the performance of ground coupled seasonal thermal energy storage for heating and cooling: A Canadian context," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 250(C), pages 593-604.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:17:p:6127-:d:1222962. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.