Designing an Automatic Control System for the Improved Functioning of a Solar Wall with Phase Change Material (PCM)

Patrick Favier; Laurent Zalewski; Stephane Lassue; Sohail Anwar

doi:10.4236/ojee.2016.51003

Open Journal of Energy Efficiency > Vol.5 No.1, March 2016

Designing an Automatic Control System for the Improved Functioning of a Solar Wall with Phase Change Material (PCM) ()

Patrick Favier¹, Laurent Zalewski², Stephane Lassue², Sohail Anwar³

¹IUT Bethune, Université d’ Artois, Arras, France.
²LGCgE Laboratory, Université d’ Artois, Arras, France.
³Department of Engineering, Altoona College, Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, PA, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/ojee.2016.51003 PDF HTML XML 2,742 Downloads 3,433 Views Citations

Abstract

Solar walls constitute an important green architectural feature that positively contributes to energy saving in buildings. Different configurations may be proposed, such as, solar wall with Phase Change Material (PCM), composite solar wall, photovoltaic solar wall, zigzag solar wall, and solar hybrid wall. Being environmentally friendly, these passive solar components can provide thermal comfort and help save energy. Their disadvantages include principally unpredictable heat transfer, heat losses by night for some systems or inverse thermo-siphon phenomenon. Appropriate energy management techniques can be used to control and optimize the performances of solar walls. An experimental study for energy management of a PCM based solar wall is described in this paper. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed automatic control system in regulating the capture of solar energy.

Keywords

Solar Walls, Solar Energy, Energy Storage, Phase Change Material, Energy Management

Share and Cite:

Favier, P. , Zalewski, L. , Lassue, S. and Anwar, S. (2016) Designing an Automatic Control System for the Improved Functioning of a Solar Wall with Phase Change Material (PCM). Open Journal of Energy Efficiency, 5, 19-29. doi: 10.4236/ojee.2016.51003.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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