Abstract

Effective and environmentally responsive techniques of energy management in residential buildings are desirable for the resulting reduction of energy costs and consumption. In this paper, an improved and efficient technique of energy management in pipe-embedded wall heating/cooling systems, called the Thermal Barrier, is described. Specifically, the Thermal Barrier is a technique focused on the management and control of heat supply into and heat extraction from external walls containing embedded pipes. The installed pipe-embedded wall heating/cooling system is fully controlled by a special fuzzy logic program that synchronizes the heat supply/extraction with variable heat loads. The main operation rule of the Thermal Barrier is to keep changes of the wall internal energy close to zero for the given reference temperature of a pseudo-surface created by an embedded pipe system of the wall heat exchanger. Comprehensive field measurement results associated with an example Thermal Barrier System installed in a residential two-story house are presented. These measurements confirmed the high-efficiency of the Thermal Barrier and its ability to use low-grade heat sources and sinks to effectively control an indoor climate. The supply water temperature was very low (25.3 °C) in the winter and very high (20.5 °C) in the summer. Daily variations of the indoor air temperature did not exceed 0.8 °C throughout the year. During the summer, the Thermal Barrier System operated in cooling-mode only from a low-grade renewable heat sink. The flexibility of the Thermal Barrier also allows for using heat sources/sinks different from those in the test house.

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