Experimental And Simulative Investigation Of The Electronic Radiant Floor Heating System With Phase Change Materials

The application of phase change materials (PCMs) in building energy conservation hasbecome increasingly important in the field of building materials application. It is theinnovation of applying PCMs to the floor radiant heating system. Compared with thetraditional way with hot water, the electronic floor radiant heating system (EFRHS) issuperior with various advantages, such as a lower occupancy rate, low cost in the early stageof construction, convenient in heating, more flexible temperature control and simple systemmaintenance, etc. Yet, as electricity is high-grade energy, it isn’t cost-effective to convert theelectrical energy into heat energy both in the aspect of energy efficiency and economic. Hence,the EFRHS has not been widely used. However, the application of PCMs can completelysolve this contradiction. With the use of PCMs, the “valley electricity” in the night time isconverted into heat energy for building heating so as to realize the peak-shift of electricity,which can achieve the objectives of economic, energy saving and clean heating.Based on the experimental conditons of the climate in southern china, the paperestablished a test room for the EFRHS with PCMs, as well as a two-dimensional unsteadyheat transfer model which was calculated by FLUENT software. Through a combination ofexperimental study and numerical simulation, the effects that physical parameters of PCMsand operating conditions acted on the EFRHS were investigated.The results can be concluded as follows: The EFRHS with PCMs could protect thelifetime of the electro-thermal film, and better realize the thermal comfort as well aseconomical energy saving. In the experiment, when the heating time was operated as10000sand11800s, the latter resulted in a higher peak temperature and longer heat supply time; whenthe heating power was operated as200W and220W, it came out that a larger heat powerresulted in a greater heating rate, higher peak temperature value and longer heat supply timewhile the time for reaching the peak temperature value was not affected. In the numericalsimulation, through the investigations of the effects that different phase-transition temperatures, phase transition temperature range, latent heat, thickness ofPCMs, heating power, environment temperature and heat transfer coefficients of buildingenvelope acted on the EFRHS, a consistency between the experiment and simulaiton wasobtained in respect of the heating power.