Investigation of the thermal performance of a passive solar test-room with wall latent heat storage

An experimental and numerical simulation study is presented of the application of phase change materials (PCM) in building envelope components for thermal storage in a passive solar test-room. Gypsum board impregnated with a phase change material was used. The experimental study was conducted in a full-scale outdoor test-room with the PCM gypsum board as inside wall lining. An explicit finite difference model was developed to simulate the transient heat transfer process in the walls. Reasonable agreement between the simulation and the experimental results was observed. It was shown that the utilization of PCM gypsum board in a passive solar building may reduce the maximum room temperature by about 4 °C during the daytime and can reduce the heating load at night significantly.