Brick masonry walls with PCM macrocapsules: An experimental approach

In the last decade, developed countries have been working on new and more complex legal requirements to minimize the energy consumption and increase energy efficiency of new and existing buildings. The building sector presently represents 27% of the total energy consumption in the European Union and is one of the major energy consumers. Accordingly, it is expected that in 2035 this sector will be the fourth largest contributor to CO2 emissions. To minimize the energy consumption it is essential to improve the research on passive cooling and heating strategies, as well as in the development of new materials and building components with lower environmental impact. The development of new techniques for energy storage resourcing to renewable energy sources presently dominates the essential research trend for sustainable and low energy buildings. New and intelligent materials, as the case of Phase Change Materials (PCM) may store latent heat energy in addition to the typical sensible energy capacity of common building materials, allowing to store significantly more energy during the phase change process. Macroencapsulated PCM applications into building envelope components, opaque and translucent, can take advantage of solar energy, potentially reducing the overall energy consumption of active heating and cooling systems. This paper exposes the main results of an experimental testing campaign of a wall element with PCM macroencapsulation. A thorough discussion of the experimental campaign in respect to the effect of PCM macrocapsules incorporation into brick masonry walls thermal and inertial behaviour is presented. It is essentially evaluated the influence of the phase change process of the PCM over the attenuation of temperature fluctuations and time constant. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.