Designing an Automatic Control System for the Improved Functioning of a Solar Wall with Phase Change Material (PCM)

摘要

Solar walls constitute an important green architectural feature that positively contributes to energy saving in buildings. Different configurations may be proposed, such as, solar wall with Phase Change Material (PCM), composite solar wall, photovoltaic solar wall, zigzag solar wall, and solar hybrid wall. Being environmentally friendly, these passive solar components can provide thermal comfort and help save energy. Their disadvantages include principally unpredictable heat transfer, heat losses by night for some systems or inverse thermo-siphon phenomenon. Appropriate energy management techniques can be used to control and optimize the performances of solar walls. An experimental study for energy management of a PCM based solar wall is described in this paper. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed automatic control system in regulating the capture of solar energy.