Smart assessment of thermal comfort concept inside a building

Abstract

The growing energy consumption of the building sector is becoming a current issue affecting both environmental and economical fields. The present paper investigates thermal comfort conditions inside the manuscript room of the National library of Tunisia by using an IoT based smart measuring system. The tracked parameters are temperature and relative humidity. These parameters are considered as the fundamental factors influencing thermal comfort inside a building. The results of this survey performed during the month of January 2019 lead us to propose an energy optimization measure, in order to update heating system electricity consumption. The proposed approach consists of the use of phase change materials (PCM) window shutters. PCM window shutters can act as thermal regulators thanks to their melting solidification process. The results of the proposed solution showed that adopting PCM window shutters for the examined test room can save up to 10% for the first phase change material and 15% for the second phase change material of the total energy used by the heat pump unit to maintain the inside air temperature at 21°C.