Numerical Investigation of a Novel Heat Pipe Radiant Floor Heating System with Integrated Phase Change Materials

Abstract

The subject of buildings energy efficiency has gained increased interest in modern society. Recently, researchers aiming to reduce the energy demand of buildings have studied the implementation of phase change materials (PCMs) in various building elements. At the same time, researchers studied the implementation of unconventional technologies such as heat pipes (HP) in the buildings’ heating system. This paper combines both of these technologies in order to take advantage of the thermal storage properties of PCMs and overcome their reduced conductivity with heat pipes. Through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, this paper studies and highlights that with the implementation of a PCM, a reduction of the daily energy demand is achieved through the increase in the discharge phase time.

Keywords

• phase change material
• floor heating
• heat pipe
• computational fluid dynamics