Thermal performance of radiant floor cooling with phase change material for energy-efficient buildings

Abstract

Abstract In this article, we propose a novel radiant floor cooling system employing phase change materials (PCMs) with the applicability of a thermal energy simulation (TES) using two different TESs (spiral and counter). The numerical simulation was done with the help of a computational fluid dynamic program tool, namely, the ANSYS FLUENT 2022R2 software package. The results indicated that the cooling system’s performance is not greatly improved by the water mass flow rate (0.5 kg/s). Such radiant floor cooling systems can be calculated and designed with the help of the model. The results also showed that the PCM took a long time to dissolve with respect to the counterblow model (144 min) more than the spiral model reached (130 min) and thus benefited from storing and reducing energy consumption during peak load. The results also showed the temperature range of melting during the charging process is about 27–29°C, while it ranges between 22 and 26°C) during the discharge process. It is found that, generally, the counter pattern is the best configuration, allowing better thermal homogenization.