Study of a phase change material storage for the solar air-conditioning system of a net-zero energy hotel in a tropical region
Résumé
In tropical countries, the major part of energy consumption of buildings is due to air conditioning systems. Indeed, in a luxury hotel, they correspond to a share of 60%. It becomes important to set up passive or autonomous buildings and the corresponding solutions to move towards energy autonomy. Given the decreasing cost of photovoltaic (PV) cells, the proposed solution is a coupling of solar PV to a chiller. A cold storage in a phase change material (PCM) of a mixture of fatty acids (fusion temperature of 16 °C) derived from coconut oil and incorporated into a compressed expanded graphite matrix was chosen. This article explains the design of the solar air conditioning system. A TRNSYS simulation helps assess the performance improvement brought by this unique PCM storage. Then the first experimental results of the characterization of the phase change composite material implemented in the energy storage are detailed. © 2020 International Institute of Refrigeration. All rights reserved.