Numerical investigations on performance of phase change material Trombe wall in building

Highlights: • Two PCM wallboards with different melting temperatures are used. • The shape-stabilized PCM could maintain solid shape without encapsulation. • The external PCM couples with solar chimney in summer. • The internal PCM couples with solar heating in winter. • The novel PCM Trombe wall could achieve thermal manage in a year. -- Abstract: Based on classical Trombe wall, a novel Trombe wall with double layers shape-stabilized phase change materials (PCMs) panel was proposed. The performance of Trombe wall integrated with double layers PCMs panel was simulated in this study. The external wallboard was active in summer couple with solar chimney of Trombe wall. The internal wallboard was active in winter couple with solar heating of Trombe wall. The novel PCM Trombe wall could improve building envelope thermal properties all over the year. Its energy and thermal performance in Wuhan, China were studied numerically base on TRNSYS software. The simulation data demonstrated that the optimal phase change temperature of external and internal PCM wallboard was 30 °C and 18 °C, respectively. The peak cooling load and heating load in PCM Trombe building was reduced by 9% and 15% compared with that in reference Trombe building. The indoor temperature in PCM room was averagely 3.28 °C lower than that in reference room in summer. The indoor temperature in PCM room was averagely 0.11 °C higher than that in reference room in winter. The PCM Trombe building could reduce indoor temperature fluctuations and improve thermal comfort all over the year compared with classical Trombe building.