In this study, a passive solar house prototype was built using Trombe wall and was tested in the semi-arid region of Batna, in eastern Algeria. Traditional local materials (stone and adobe) were used for the construction of the thermal storage wall. A new local bio-based material made from date palm trunks was used for the insulation of the passive house prototype. For a better understanding of passive house heating and for a comparative study, a numerical simulation, using Fluent, was carried out. The aim of this study was to supply recommendations for improving the passive systems and to participate to the energy consumption control in the building sector. The results show that the experimental and numerical simulation results are in good agreement. The optimal orientation of the solar passive house has been determined, which is at 160° southeast. The use of local and bio-based materials has proven its effectiveness in the construction of the passive house. The thermal behavior of date palm wood has been found to be close to those of insulation materials commonly used in buildings. That means it has the same thermal insulation ability (thermal conductivity). On the other hand, the results show that the thermal efficiency of the passive solar heating system, with an adobe wall is significantly higher (50%) than that with a stone wall (30.7%).

The two-dimensional transient heat conduction through a multilayers wall made of different materials and thicknesses was numerically resolved. The equations system resolution was carried out by Alternating direction implicit method (ADI). The outdoor and indoor temperatures and the convective coefficients used as boundary conditions in the developed Fortran program were from the Algerian regulatory technical document. After validation of the Fortran program with literature, it was used to studying the influence of different boundary conditions (bottom and top sides), on the thermal insulation in the building, for many configurations of external walls, usually used in building construction at Batna city (Algeria). Results showed that for the configurations that give bad thermal insulation, the conditions imposed on the top and bottom of the wall have practically no influence on the internal temperature of the multilayers wall, however, the opposite is observed for the configurations that ensure good thermal insulation.