What are the Potential Benefits of Including Latent Storage in Common Wallboard?

Abstract

Previous work has shown that wallboard can be successfully manufactured to contain up to 30 percent phase-change material (PCM), or wax, thus enabling this common building material to serve as a thermal energy storage device. The PCM wallboard was analyzed for passive solar applications and found to save energy with a reasonable payback time period of five years. Further evaluations of the wallboard are reported in this paper. This analysis looks at potential applications of PCM wallboard as a load management device and as a comfort enhancer. Results show that the wallboard is ineffective in modifying the comfort level but can provide significant load management relief. In some applications the load management strategy also serves to save a small amount of energy, in others there is a small energy penalty.