Numerical Investigation of Heat Exchanging and Heat Comfort in Building Room Embedded with Phase Change Material

This paper presents a one-dimensional numerical investigation to study the heat exchanging and the thermal comfort conditions inside a building room during the heating season. three walls of the room are insulated, and the remained wall is constructed with brick that is embedded with phase change material (PCM). The mathematical model is based on pure conduction in brick and PCM, and on natural convection in the indoor air; the non-insulated wall is subjected to a constant temperature at the external surfaces. The enthalpy method is used to resolve energy equations in both solid and liquid phases of PCM. The natural convection inside the liquid phase of PCM storage unit is taken into account in via the dependence of the effective thermal conductivity on the liquid fraction. The model developed in this study is analyzed and compared with literature, and a good agreement is showed. Then, a parametric study for different geometrical and thermo-physical parameters of the building room is conducted.