Richard Cantin

Full-scale study of a building equipped with a multi-layer rack latent heat thermal energy storage system

Phase change material has been installed as a latent heat thermal energy storage system coupled with the ventilation system in an office building located in Lyon, France. The main purpose of this study is to determine if the phase change material system can guarantee the summer comfort of the occupants without energy-consuming cooling devices. Sensors have been set up, and the collected data are monitored to study the thermal behavior of the building and the phase change material. Numerical simulations complete the work to study and compare the building behavior without phase change material. The temperature charts in each office show that the thermal comfort of the workers is acceptable in winter and summer. Numerical results show a difference of temperature in offices due to the ventilation through the crawl space equipped with the phase change material multi-layer racks. The temperature in the crawl space varies between 12°C and 25°C (53.6°F and 77°F) all through the year. It is then possible to conclude that the new ventilation system is efficient for the precooling or preheating of air.

Thermal and Aeraulic Parametric Analysis of Historical Dwellings

Abstract Old buildings represent, in many countries, a great part of the existing building stock. In France this amounts to more than 30%. It is important that they are retrofitted to improve energy performance. To compare reliable retrofitting measures, it is crucial to know their thermal and energy behaviour, their typological characteristics, the building techniques used and their heating and ventilation systems. This paper presents the results of long-term field measurements in a historical dwelling built in 1906 in Paris. In addition to the architectural and thermo-physical features of the whole building, the characteristics of the equipment, and the daily and weekly occupation profiles, indoor air temperature, relative humidity, hourly climatic data (air temperature and humidity, wind direction and velocity, solar irradiation) and hourly energy consumption were measured for an entire year. A thermo-aeraulic model of this dwelling was developed using the TrnSys-Comis® environment and the results are presented in this paper. Simulations for two periods (winter and summer) were analysed and compared with field measurements. This paper presents these results and attempts to estimate the uncertainties between real measurements and simulation outputs. These uncertainties arise due to the complexity of developing a dynamic model describing the exact building thermal behaviour for such an old building.

Impact of climatic data uncertainties on the simulation of the thermal behavior of ancient houses

In many countries, the stock of existing buildings accounts for half of the energy consumption. With the actual environmental and energetic context, it is urgent to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gases emissions in the buildings sector. In order to optimize retrofitting strategies, the thermal behavior of the existing buildings must be efficiently modeled by the dynamic building energy simulation tools. The stock of existing buildings is very important with, for instance, more than 30 millions of dwellings in France. This stock is characterized by a wide variety of construction techniques that are not taken into account in the existing calculation methods and tools as has been shown in a recent French study. This paper presents in the first part the uncertainties related to the thermal modeling of a traditional ancient house using different calculation tools. Then the house is modeled with the dynamic simulation tool TRNSYS in order to analyze the influence of the uncertainties of the climatic data on the quality of the results.