Better implementation of ventilative cooling (cooling of buildings using outside air as main source) in national building standards, legislation and compliance tools

Low energy buildings are highly insulated and airtight and therefore subject to overheating risks, where Ventilative cooling (VC) might be a relevant solution. VC is an application (distribution in time and space) of air flow rates to reduce cooling loads in spaces using outside air driven by natural, mechanical or hybrid ventilation strategies. Ventilative cooling reduces overheating in both existing and new buildings - being both a sustainable and energy efficient solution to improve indoor thermal comfort (State-of-the-art-review, Kolokotroni et al., 2015).

Ventilative Cooling – Time for large scale implementation?

The current development in building energy efficiency towards nearly-zero energy buildings (nZEB) represents a number of new challenges to design and construction. One of the major new challenges is the increased need for cooling arising in these highly insulated and airtight buildings. The cooling demand depends less on the outdoor temperature, and more on solar radiation and internal heat gains. This naturally gives better potential for the use of ventilative cooling technologies, because the cooling need is not only in summer, but actually all year round. 

Quantitative relationships between classroom CO2 concentration and learning in elementary schools

The data from published studies were used to build relationships between learning outcomes and air quality in classrooms. Psychological tests measuring cognitive abilities and skills, school tasks including mathematical and language-based tasks, ratings schemes and tests used to assess progress in learning including end-of-year grades and exam scores were considered to represent learning outcomes. Indoor air quality was characterized by concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2). Short-term sick leave was included as well because it can influence learning.

Ventilative cooling in a single-family active house from design stage to user experience

Ventilative cooling through window airing presents a promising potential for low energy houses in order to avoid overheating risks and to reduce energy consumption of air conditioners. This case study aims at describing how ventilative cooling has been taken into account as from the design stage of a low-energy single-family active house located near Paris. Its performance on thermal comfort and air renewal, monitored from both sociological (feedback from a family) and scientific approach, is described and compares these two qualitative and quantitative approaches.

Automated window opening control system to address thermal discomfort risk in energy renovated dwellings. Summertime assessment

Major and deep energy renovations of single-family houses (more than 60% of the building stock) are expected in Europe over the next several years (Psomas et al., 2016a). A number of research projects have documented and verified overheating risk during the design and operation phase in nearly zero energy or existing renovated single-family houses without mechanical cooling systems in temperate climates. Post occupancy surveys and comfort studies have also monitored high indoor temperatures over 27oC and 28oC even in Northern countries (Psomas et al., 2016a).

A novel algorithm for demand-control of a single-room ventilation unit with a rotary heat exchanger

Energy renovations seek to improve the airtightness of dwellings and thus require ventilation and heat recovery to maintain or improve energy-efficiency, indoor climate, and durability. These ventilation systems often control the indoor air of an apartment as a single climate zone, which neglects the different demands of individual rooms. Renovations result in greater retention of heat and air inside the building envelope, so rooms become especially sensitive to gains from solar radiation, occupancy, moisture loads and pollutants.

Numerical analysis of thermal comfort in Near-Zero Energy Buildings (NZEB) with light radiant ceilings and diffuse ventilation

Renewable energy sources for heating and cooling buildings usually have temperatures close to room temperature and therefore a limited convertibility potential, i.e. they are of low value. To exploit low-valued energy sources Low Temperature Heating and High Temperature Cooling (LTH-HTC) systems must be developed.

Circadian House: a vision for homes designed to be healthy and human-centric

Based on a series of workshops, a Circadian House is defined as a house that is designed to support a healthy life for its occupants through a human-centric design. The workshops were held in 2012-2013 and defined 3 key principles and ten key factors to consider in the design of homes.

Affordable and replicable renovation of social housing fulfilling indoor climate and energy targets thanks to seven replicable renovation elements

RenovActive is a renovation project which took place in Brussels based on the concept of Climate Renovation that implies achieving an excellent indoor climate as well as a high energy performance. The house belongs to a social housing association and is renovated within the financial frame for social housing in Brussels, and renovated using standard solutions and products to facilitate future replications of the result. Seven generic replicable elements were applied; these elements can be used in other renovation projects and are described in the paper.

Thermal performance of ventilated solar collector with energy storage containing phase change material

This paper presents a ventilated solar collector with energy storage of fins containing Phase Change Material (PCM) in the air cavity and investigates its thermal performance. The idea is to use PCM in combination with ventilation as a thermal controller of indoor environment and to consequently decrease the building energy consumption both in summer and winter time. The main parts of the solar collector are plate fins with small thickness containing PCM fitted into the ventilation cavity, which is a good way to compensate the low thermal conductivity of PCM.

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