PCMS as a tool for increasing thermal inertia in buildings

It is well known, that energy consumed by the HVAC systems in buildings represents an important part of the global energy consumed in Europe (Directive 2010/31/EU). Latent heat storage has been widely studied (Cabeza et al. 2011, Zhou et al. 2012) for its potential in many applications for building energy management (Lim et al. 2014). Passive implementation of phase change materials (PCM) in buildings has demonstrated significant energy reduction of HVAC systems, but with some limitations (Castell et al. 2010). For this reason, active implementation of PCM in buildings has high potential. In this paper two innovative active systems are presented, consisting of thermal energy storage units embedded inside the two different parts of building components. A double skin facade and an internal slab were filled with PCM in order to act as a storage unit and a heating and cooling supply.