Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history:
Received 6 May 2008
Accepted 26 May 2008
We provide a quantitative understanding of the relationship between thermal mass and cooling load, i.e.
the effect of thermal mass on energy consumption of air-conditioning in ofce buildings. A simple ofcebuilding model with air-conditioning at daytime and free cooling at nighttime is analyzed in detail to
quantify the hourly and overall variation of cooling load of air-conditioning. As an important parameter,
an increase of time constant can effectively reduce the cooling load, by as much as more than 60% when
the time constant is more than 400 h. However, when the time constant is larger than 1000 h, a further
increase may slightly increase the cooling load, as a too large time constant may also postpone the heat
release of thermal mass until the daytime. For the most effective reduction of cooling load, the interior
and exterior convective heat transfer numbers need to be matched.
2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Cooling load
Cooling load ratio
Thermal mass
Night ventilation
Air-conditioning
1. Introduction
Buildings consume more than 30% of the primary energy
worldwide. In China, buildings account for 23% in 2003 of the total
energy use and is expected to increase to 30% by 2010 [1]. 65% of
the building energy consumption in 2003 in China was due to
heating, ventilation and air-conditioning [1]. Hence, improving
building energy efciency has become one of the critical issues for
overall national energy strategy in China.
The use of thermal mass in a building can reduce peak heating
or cooling load, and subsequently building energy consumption, in
particular when it is integrated with night ventilation. Thermal
mass is dened as the thermal materials that can absorb heat, store
it and release it later. Thermal mass includes building envelope,
furniture, internal walls, etc. Thermal storage capacity of building
mass is one of the factors describing the building thermal
performance [2]. In naturally ventilated buildings, thermal mass
is effective for reducing the air temperature uctuation [3].
Many studies investigated the relationship between thermal
mass and indoor air temperature, and the effect of thermal mass
and night ventilation on cooling load; as reviewed by Balaras [4].
16 different simplied models for estimating the cooling load of a
building, considering the buildings thermal mass, were summarized and compared in Ref. [4]. Parameters describing the effects of
thermal mass include the effective heat storage capacity [5,6],
diurnal heat capacity [7], thermal effectiveness parameter [8],
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 2816 2625; fax: +852 2858 5415.
E-mail address: liyg@hku.hk (L. Yang).
0378-7788/$ see front matter 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2008.05.014
admittance factor [9], and total thermal time constant [10]. The
effective layer thickness of external walls [11] and the surface area
of thermal storage [12,13] also signicantly affect the thermal
mass performance.
Existing studies showed that the reduction in cooling load by
using thermal mass vary between 18 and 50% [8,1416]. But these
studies were mostly based on the laboratory monitoring or eld
experiments, without systematic theoretical studies. Hence this
paper aims to provide a detailed theoretical analysis on the
relationship between use of thermal mass and reduction of cooling
load. Through a simple building model, all parameters affecting the
thermal mass performance are quantitatively evaluated and
analyzed.
2. A simple building model
Here only the warm climates are considered, while the results
and analysis can also be easily extended to the cold climates. Fig. 1
shows a simple ofce-building model with daytime air-conditioning and night ventilation. The air temperature distribution in the
building is uniform. Both internal and external thermal storage
materials are modeled as a thermal mass wall. All building
envelope except the thermal mass wall is perfectly insulated. As
shown later, the location of thermal mass relative to insulation and
effect of insulation may be analyzed by changing the interior and
exterior convective heat transfer numbers. Thermal radiation
between room surfaces is ignored. All heat gain (including solar
heat gain) and heat generation in the building is lumped into one
heat source term, i.e. E at daytime and no indoor heat gain is
considered at nighttime. The temperature distribution in the
2053
Nomenclature
Ai
Ao
cm
cp
E
g
hi
ho
M
qv
Qcl
t
TE
Ti
Tm
To
Tset
To
DTo
Greek symbols
b
phase shift (s)
li
interior convective heat transfer number
lo
exterior convective heat transfer number
j
cooling load ratio
jt
total cooling load ratio
r
air density (kg/m3)
t
time constant (s)
v
frequency of outdoor temperature variation (1/s)
Fig. 1. A simple one-zone building model with periodic outdoor air temperature
variation when: (a) daytime, the air-conditioning (AC) system is on and the indoor
air temperature is kept constant and (b) nighttime, AC is off and the building is
ventilated at a constant ventilation rate.
@T m
ho Ao T m T o hi Ai T m T i 0
@t
Q cl hi Ai T m T i E 0
(1)
(2)
(3)
vt
@T m
lo li T m lo To li T i lo DTo sinvt
@vt
(4)
lo
li
T
T
lo li o lo li set
lo DTo
q sinvt b1
lo li 2 v2 t 2
C 1 elo li =vtvt
(5)
2054
mass.
R vt2
jt R vvtt21
jQ cl jdvt
(9)
2.2. Nighttime
9
8
>
>
=
<
li lo
li lo
Q cl vt rcp qv T E
To T set q DTo sinvt b1 C 1 li elo li =vtvt
>
>
l
l
2
o
i
;
:
lo l v2 t 2
(6)
The two heat balance equations for the thermal mass and room
air are
Mcm
@T m
ho Ao T m T o hi Ai T m T i 0
@t
rcp qv T o T i hi Ai T m T i 0
(10)
(11)
Let li li =1 li , we have
vt
@T m
lo l0i T m lo l0i To lo l0 DTo sinvt (12)
@vt
The general solution of Eq. (12) is
lo l0i
DTo sinvt b2
T m vt To q
2
lo l0i v2 t 2
0
C 2 elo li =vtvt
(13)
l0i
lo l0i
DT sinvt l0i q
li o
2
lo l0i v2 t 2
0
(14)
q
2
T E1 li lo =lo li To T set li lo = lo li v2 t 2 DTo sinvt b1 C 1 li elo li =vtvt
Q cl
j
Q cl0
T E1 li lo =lo li To T set li lo =lo li DTo sinvt
(8)
0
lo li
DTo sinvt 2 b2 C 2 elo l i =vtvt2
To q
0 2
2
2
lo li v t
lo
li
lo DTo
T q
T
lo li o lo li set
2
l l v2 t 2
o
sinvt 2 b1 C 1 e
(15)
2055
Fig. 3. Proles of cooling load ratio and total cooling load ratio as a function of the
temperature differences between indoor and outdoor air To T set : (a) cooling load
ratio; (b) total cooling load ratio.
Fig. 2. The temperature proles of indoor air and thermal mass with different mean
outdoor air temperatures: (a) To 308:15 K; (b) To 303:15 K; (c) To 297:15 K.
lo l0i
DTo sinvt 1 24v b2
To q
2
lo l0i v2 t 2
C 2 elo li =vtvt1 24
lo
lo li
To
lo DTo
T q sinvt 1
lo li set
2
lo li v2 t 2
li
b1 C 1 elo li =vtvt1
(16)
The two constants C1 and C2 are determined from Eqs. (15) and
(16). The expressions are lengthy and are not given here.
3. Results and discussion
As in Eqs. (8) and (9), the control parameters for the cooling load
ratio include indoor air setting Tset, the outdoor air temperature
2056
Fig. 4. Proles of cooling load ratio and total cooling load ratio as a function of
outdoor air temperature swing: (a) cooling load ratio; (b) total cooling load ratio.
Fig. 5. Proles of cooling load ratio and total cooling load ratio as a function of time
constant: (a) cooling load ratio; (b) total cooling load ratio.
2057
Fig. 6. Proles of cooling load ratio and total cooling load ratio as affected by the
interior convective heat transfer number: (a) cooling load ratio; (b) total cooling
load ratio.
Fig. 7. Proles of cooling load ratio and total cooling load ratio as affected by the
exterior convective heat transfer number: (a) cooling load ratio; (b) total cooling
load ratio.
Acknowledgments
The work was supported by a grant from the Research Grants
Council of Hong Kong SAR, China (Project No. 7154/05E). The
authors thank Dr. Pengcheng Xu for his assistance in mathematical
derivations. The work is a part of the International Energy Agency
(IEA) Annex 44 project on Integrating Environmentally Responsive
Elements in Buildings.
References
4. Conclusions
The effect of thermal mass on cooling load reduction in
buildings is studied in detail using a very simple building model,
which allows us to examine the hourly benets in using thermal
mass and night ventilation. The cooling load ratio and the total
cooling load ratio are introduced to represent the effect of thermal
mass on cooling load reduction. Our analysis quantied the
dependence of the cooling load on the thermal properties of
thermal mass, including the time constant t and the convective
heat transfer factors (both interior number li and exterior number
lo), the outdoor air temperature, and as well as the indoor heat
gain. Our results show that only appropriate amount of thermal
mass in terms of both thermal properties and convective heat
transfer together with suitable outdoor climates will benet most.
The present work provides a simple model for designing thermal
mass and night ventilation.
[1] Y. Wu, Chinese building energy conservation: existing situation, problems and
policy, in: Presentation on the International Conference on Sustainable Development in Building and Environment, Chongqing, China, 2003.
[2] ASHRAE, ASHRAE HandbookHVAC Applications, American Society of Heating,
Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc., Atlanta, 1999.
[3] H. Asan, Y.S. Sancaktar, Effects of walls thermophysical properties on time lag and
decrement factor, Energy and Buildings 28 (2) (1998) 159166.
[4] C.A. Balaras, The role of thermal mass on the cooling load of buildings. An
overview of computational methods, Energy and Buildings 24 (1) (1996) 110.
[5] E.H. Mathews, P.G. Rousseau, P.G. Richards, C. Lombard, A procedure to estimate
the effective heat storage capability of a building, Building and Environment 26
(2) (1991) 179188.
[6] K.A. Antonopoulos, E.P. Koronaki, Apparent and effective thermal capacitance of
buildings, Energy 23 (3) (1998) 183192.
[7] J.D. Balcomb, Heat storage and distribution inside passive solar buildings, in:
Proceedings of the Second International PLEA Conference, 1983, pp. 547561.
[8] M.D. Ruud, J.W. Mitchell, S.A. Klein, Use of building thermal mass to offset cooling
loads, ASHRAE Transactions 96 (pt. 2) (1990) 820829.
[9] P. Burberry, Practical Thermal Design in Buildings, Batsford Academic and
Educational Ltd., London, 1983.
[10] B. Givoni, Man, Climate and Architecture, 2nd ed., Applied Science, London, 1981.
2058