Phase change material for improved indoor climate

This report aims to study how the indoor climate in a conference room can be improved by the use of phase change material (PCM). The study includes an experiment where 40 kg of salt hydrate based PCM was placed within a conference room located in an office in the city of Uppsala, Sweden. The experiment resulted in a decrease in the peak temperature with respect to the internal heat gains in the conference room and a slower temperature increase with PCM implemented. The report concludes that PCM can improve the indoor climate in regard to its ability to limit the temperature fluctuation. The study also contains modelling and simulation over the office and conference room in the program Trnsys. This was carried out to study how the temperature and cooling demand in the conference room and office respectively would change with a larger implementation of PCM. When 106 kg of PCM was simulated to be implemented in two of the conference room walls, the specific peak temperature was on average decreased with 0.17 °C/kW during the year. Furthermore, a decrease in the cooling demand with 16 % was achieved when implementing 1 208 kg of PCM in the internal walls of the office. This study shows that there is potential for reducing the cooling demand in the building through an implementation of PCM. Further studies with a more detailed model of the office is recommended before deciding upon if and where PCM should be implemented