Spectral and angular solar properties of a PCM-filled double glazing unit

Abstract

9Background: Phase Change Materials (PCMs) have been proposed as a means to increase the thermal inertia 10 of glazing systems. These materials have optical features that need to be investigated and characterised in order 11 to better understand the potential of these systems and to provide reliable data for numerical simulations.

Phase Change Materials in Transparent Building Envelopes: A Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) Analysis

“…The use of large integrating sphere equipment [33,35] has been necessary to obtain reliable results, due to the high scattering property of the system when the PCM is in a solid …”

“…Furthermore, some results concerning laboratory characterizations [32,34,35,44] and numerical investigations [24] were published to determine the optical properties of the technologies for PCMs in solid and liquid states. The use of large integrating sphere equipment [33,35] has been necessary to obtain reliable results, due to the high scattering property of the system when the PCM is in a solid state.…”

“…• the geographical distribution of the studies, which also provides an indication of the climatic conditions of the study; • the climatic/seasonal distribution of the studies: winter season (37%) [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], mid-season (10%) [14,15,20] and summer (50%) [13][14][15][16][17]20,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] season periods; • the most investigated PCM typologies, that have been found to be paraffin wax (60%) [14][15][16]18,19,22,23,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] and salt hydrates (20%) [12,13,…”

“…• in all the papers, the PCM had been macro-encapsulated in containers, that is, glass containers (70%) [12][13][14][15][20][21][22][23][24][25]27,[30][31][32][33][34][35][38][39][40][41], polycarbonate containers (20%) [16,17,19,28,36,42] and aluminium containers (10%) [18,26,29]; • the technologies had predominantly been characterised in outdoor test cells (57%) [14,15,17-22, 24-27,29,31,35] and through laboratory analysis (53%) [12,13,17,20,23,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42], while some other studies had been carried out by coupling a modelling activity with an experimental activity (37%) …”

Daylight characteristics of a polymer dispersed liquid crystal switchable glazing

“…Comfort Working space [13] 500 Comfortable Office work [14] 500 Comfortable Office work [15] 840-2146 (morning) 840-2146 (morning) Comfortable Office work [4,5,15] 782-1278 (afternoon) 782-1278 (afternoon) Comfortable 700-1800 700-1800 Comfortable Computer work [16] 100-2000 100-2000 Useful Daylight Illuminance Any types of work [12] Switchable glazing includes electrochromic (EC) [17][18][19], gasochromic [20], thermochromic [21], thermotropic [22,23], liquid crystal (LC) [24], suspended particle device (SPD) [25][26][27][28] and phase change materials (PCM) [29]. These glazing can be electrically, thermally, or chemically actuated.…”