Air preheating potential with high Opaque Ventilated Façade under natural and forced convection

Abstract

Abstract Opaque ventilated façades (OVF) are increasingly used in building envelope because of their positive impact on building energy efficiency. Usually, air flow is driven by natural ventilation. Recently, there were some attempts to drive air flow mechanically to preheat or precool air in combination with HVAC, Heat pump or Latent Heat Thermal Energy Storage (LHTES) systems. In this framework, an experimental real-scale module of an OVF was built (1.9 m width and 3.5 m height). In this study, OVF is tested during autumn under natural and under forced convection by means of ventilator placed at cavity outlet. Inlet air flowrate are changed from day to day or during the day. For each test, temperature, air velocity, air flow rate and thermal flux are monitored at different locations of OVF. Their analysis shows that collector efficiency and amount of collected energy depend mainly on cavity air flow rate. The measurements are compared to simulation results obtained from two thermal models describing OVF: Trnsys Type 1230 and home-developed pseudo 2D. A good agreement is found for air temperature at cavity outlet while differences are observed in opaque layers due to modelling assumptions. Last, sensitivity analysis on two design parameters is carried out.