Indoor thermal environment and day-lighting performance of a building containing PCM glazing curtain wall

With the improvement progress of glazing envelopes energy-saving technology, enhancing the thermal inertia of the glazing envelope by heat storage means is springing up. In this study, the heat transfer and day-lighting models of a building with PCM glazing curtain wall (PGC) were developed to analyze its indoor thermal environment and day-lighting performance. Buildings containing silica aerogel (SGC) and hollow glazing curtains (HGC) were selected as the reference models, and several indexes including inner surface temperature of glazing envelope, liquid fraction rate of PCM, indoor temperature, indoor natural illumination and indoor day-lighting coefficient were adopted as the evaluations. The results show that in comparison with SGC and HGC, the building containing PGC can greatly improve indoor temperature uniformity and indoor thermal comfort. PGC filled with 10mm PCM reduces the temperature fluctuation of the inner surface of the glass and interior midpoint temperature by 35% and delay the peak time of glass inner surface temperature by 0.89h, which significantly improves the indoor temperature uniformity and meets the natural lighting requirements. With the increase of PCM thickness, the liquid fraction rate of PCM decreases greatly, which directly degrades the energy storage performance of PGC.