Integration of solar air collector with phase change material wall for a heating system

Using renewable energy is one of the effective methods to reduce building energy consumption. In this paper, a solar hot air heating system is combined with phase change material wall with an aim to improve the efficiency of solar heating. With such a heating system, the instability due to intermittency of solar energy and the efficiency of solar energy utilisation could be improved. Experimental testing and numerical modelling in the ANSYS environment have been carried out on the integrated heating system. The characteristics of phase change material wall and the percentage of the phase change materials in the wall are determined and the contribution of the phase change material is obtained. The results indicate that, compared with the non-heating case, the combined heating system increases the indoor temperature by 7 ℃ to 15 ℃ on average. When the air inlet temperature of the collector is between 37 ℃ and 77 ℃, the phase change material is fully utilised with approximately 40% of the wall performing phase change function. Analysis of the results suggests the combined heating system be better than solar air heating only system.