Applied Energy 88 (2011) 930937

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Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Thermal testing and numerical simulation of gypsum wallboards incorporated

with different PCMs content
Ana M. Borreguero, M. Luz Snchez, Jos Luis Valverde, Manuel Carmona, Juan F. Rodrguez
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Castilla La Mancha, Av. Camilo Jos Cela s/n, 13004 Ciudad Real, Spain

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 17 March 2010
Received in revised form 7 June 2010
Accepted 12 August 2010
Available online 20 September 2010
Keywords:
PCM
Heat capacity
Thermal conductivity
Gypsum

a b s t r a c t
A mathematical model based on the Fourier heat conduction equation for one dimension was developed.
The complexity of the mathematical solution of this stiff set of differential equations that use boundary
conditions that move with the solidliquid interface was simplied by using an apparent heat capacity
(cap
p ) dependent on temperature and obtained by Modulated Differential Scanning Calorimetry (MDSC).
The performance of this model was conrmed by using a home-made experimental installation for the
thermal characterization of solid materials. Theoretical curves obtained for gypsum blocks with three different contents of phase change materials (PCMs) were in agreement with experimental ones, indicating
that this thermal process can be reproduced theoretically by using the cap
p of each block and a unique
thermal conductivity of the pure gypsum. The other physical and thermal properties were taken from literature or supplied by the manufacturers. Results also indicated that the higher the PCM content, the
higher the energy storage capacity of the wallboard and the lower the wall temperature variation. Furthermore, it was found that a block containing a 5 wt.% of microcapsule allows the reduction of gypsum
thickness by 8.5%, maintaining the same insulating effect. Thus, these kind of material can be used to
improve comfort, save energy in buildings and even reduce the weight of wallboards.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Currently, the environmental impact of fossil fuels is undergoing important attention due to the combustion release into the
atmosphere by millions of tones of CO2 per year, contributing to
global warming [1]. Additionally, the dependence of humans on
this kind of energy, in addition to the continuous uctuation of
petroleum prices, promotes the research of low-cost alternative
energy sources.
In recent years, new building concepts and designs have appeared with the aim of saving energy by means of using solar energy. This new concept of construction has been called the Solar
Passive Building Concept [2].
Solar energy is intermittent and its exploitation requires the
development of proper technologies that allow its storage. A large
number of materials, commonly called phase change materials
(PCMs), can be used to absorb or release the energy equivalent
with their latent heat when the temperature of the material undergoes or overpasses the temperature of phase change. Between
them, the organic materials (parafn waxes and eutectic materials)
present some advantages with respect to the inorganic ones (eu-

Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 902204100; fax: +34 926295318.

E-mail address: juan.rromero@uclm.es (J.F. Rodrguez).
0306-2619/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2010.08.014

tectic materials, salt mixtures, and salt hydrates); they are supposed to have higher chemical and thermal stability, lack of
segregation, supercooling or corrosion problems and also, an
adjustable transition zone [24]. That is, by using parafns and alkanes it is possible to produce PCMs with a practically continuous
variation of phase change temperature within certain ranges, by
varying the number of carbon atoms or forming different molecular alloys.
Some authors have studied the direct incorporation of PCMs
into construction materials and they have found that PCMs are adsorbed to porous concrete improving the energy storage capacity
of the wall and saving energy by close to 30% with latent heat
capacities lower than 630 kJ/m2 [511]. This direct application
can cause interactions of the parafn wax with the rest of materials
and the leakage of the PCM when it remains in a liquid state [12].
Therefore, parafn waxes should be put into a container before
being incorporated in buildings [13,14]. Microencapsulation of
PCMs with a polymeric shell is considered to be one of the best
technical options to avoid this situation. In addition, the microencapsulation allows for an increase in the heat-transfer area and
control the volume change as the phase change occurs [15,16].
The most common methods described in literature for microencapsulation are interfacial polymerization, emulsion polymerization,
in situ polymerization, suspension polymerization, coacervation
and spray drying [1720].

A.M. Borreguero et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 930937

931

Nomenclature
T
t
h
x
cp
k
cap
p

temperature, C
time, s
enthalpy
heat ux direction, m
specic heat, J/(kg C)
thermal conductivity, W/(m C)
apparent heat capacity, J/(kg C)

TR
lf
T0
Tend
ki

reference temperature, C
fraction of melted PCM
initial temperature of PCM melting point, C
nal temperature of PCM melting point, C
conductivity of the building materials excepting the
PCM, W/(m C)
weight fraction of the building materials excepting the
PCM
the weight fraction of the PCM

wi
wPCM
liq

conductivity of the liquid PCM, W/(m C)

sol

conductivity of the solid PCM, W/(m C)

is the number of wall building materials excepting the
PCM

kPCM
kPCM
c

In previous works, phase change materials were successfully

encapsulated by a polymer cover (polystyrene) by means of a suspension like polymerization technique [2022]. Furthermore, gypsum blocks were doped with the synthesized microcapsules
containing the parafn wax Rubitherm RT27, nding that the
higher wall microcapsule content, the higher insulation effect
exhibited by wallboards [22].
Although the experimental results indicated that these materials qualitatively enhance comfort, a mathematical model should be
developed to understand their behaviours as energy storage systems. To account for it, it is important to know how much energy
these materials can load or release and the way in which they do it.
Many authors have presented models based on a quasi-linear, transient, thin-n equation, which predict the location of the solidliquid interface in nite storage as a function of time [2325]. These
models are complex because the boundary conditions move with
the solidliquid interface. With the aim of simplifying the model,
Lamberg [25] and Ahmad et al. [26] used an effective heat capacity
in the PCM melting temperature range, dened as the ratio between the latent heat and the solidication temperature range also
taking into account the specic heat capacity for the solid or liquid,
respectively. A similar simplication was recently conducted by
Zeng et al. [27] by using a sine function of the temperature to describe the latent heat of the PCM as an effective heat capacity for
microencapsulated phase change material slurry with contents of
up to 15.8 wt.%. These simplied models showed a good t between experimental data and the numerical solution of the differential equations. Nevertheless, the numerical solution of these
models is quite complex and a discontinuity can be before and
after the melting point of the PCM. Besides, the above models do
not take into account the heat capacity dependence with temperature. Furthermore, Zukowski [28] studied the charge and discharge characteristics of a thermal energy storage (TES)
prototype device a Plexiglas casing, light steel nets and PCM enclosed in polyethylene lm bags- and developed a computational
model in three dimensions. In the computational model he avoided
working with the location of the solidliquid interface using an
apparent specic heat which was dependent on temperature.
Additionally, to solve the discontinuity of the heat capacity, he
used apparent specic heat as a function of temperature and considered the thermal capacity of the units casing null. This last

i
Q_
Tini
T cork
ini
kcork
ccork
p
hc
T1

is a counter
entering heat ux, W/m2
initial temperature of the gypsum block, C
initial temperature of the cork, C
cork thermal conductivity, W/(m C)
heat capacity of the cork, J/(kg C)
convection heat-transfer coefcient, W/(m2 C)
environmental temperature, C

Greek Letters
q
wallboard density, kg/m3
qi
density of the building materials excepting the PCM

qliq
PCM
qsol
PCM
d

qcork
acork
dcork

density of the liquid PCM

density of the solid PCM
width of the gypsum block, m
density of the cork
cork thermal diffusivity, m2/s
width of the insulation slab, m

assumption can be considered in the case that the non-PCM materials were in low proportion respect to the PCMs. On the contrary,
when PCMs are incorporated in building materials, they are in a
low proportion with the aim to maintain the mechanical resistance
and a low nal cost of the product. Thus, a model that simplies
the boundary conditions when PCMs are used, considering an
apparent heat capacity of the whole composite material (building
material-microcapsule) as a function of temperature, is still
lacking.
To solve the aforementioned problems, in the present paper the
description of a simple model able to reproduce the thermal wallboard behaviour using an apparent heat capacity cap
p value for the
whole wallboard obtained by means of a modulated differential
scanning calorimetry analysis (MDSC) is reported. Hence, the goal
of this work is to develop a mathematical model which allows the
prediction of the thermal behaviour of gypsum blocks subjected to
a heat source through one face of the block, whereas the other
faces were insulated by cork slabs. Furthermore, in order to verify
the performance of the model, a home-made experimental installation was designed.
This model will prove that wallboard thermal behaviour is only
dependent on the physical and thermal properties of the original
materials used to build it once the latent heat of the PCM has been
considered as sensible heat in its melting temperature range.
2. Experimental section
2.1. Chemicals
Microcapsules of polystyrene containing 50% by weight of Rubitherm RT27 of commercial grade supplied by Rubitherm GmbH
were synthesized in our laboratory following the recipe and the
procedure described by Sanchez et al. [18], black gypsum supplied
by Yesos Juarez S.A (Spain) and demineralised water with a conductivity value lower than 5 lS/cm were used for building wallboards.
2.2. Analytical methods
The apparent specic heat capacity of the wallboards and the
insulating material were characterized by Modulated Differential

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A.M. Borreguero et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 930937

Scanning Calorimetry (MDSC) by using a TA Instruments analyzer

model Q100. The following conditions were found suitable to obtain the analysis in an accurate way, heating rate of 0.5 C/min,
amplitude of 0.5 C and period of 100 s in increasing the
temperature from 10 to 40 C. MDSC analyses were performed
at least twice in order to ensure the repeatability of the
measurement.
2.3. Procedure
The installation is shown schematically in Fig. 1. The experimental set up consists of a hollow metallic box of aluminium,
through which demineralized water is constantly owing by
means of a peristaltic pump from a thermostatic bath at the desired temperature. This water allowed for the manipulation of
the temperature on the aluminium cell. Dimensions of the aluminium cell were 10  6  3 cm with a wall thickness of
1.0 mm. The cell was incorporated an internal diffuser plate to
improve the liquid distribution avoiding the formation of preferential ow paths. The building wallboard with the same dimensions of the aluminium cell was placed on the upper surface of
the aluminium cell and further insulated with 2 cm-thick cork
boards. A heat ow sensor PU22T was used to monitor on line
the inlet heat ux and was located between the aluminium surface and the wallboard. Thermocouples of K-type were used to
measure temperatures: four were put in the external wallboard
surface of the cell (liquid ow direction), two others were placed
at the entering and outlet borders of the cell (liquid ow).
Finally, other two thermocouples were used to measure the
atmospheric and the external cork temperatures. All these
signals were registered continuously using the NOKEVAL program and recorded by means of a computer. All the wallboard
characterizations were carried out by applying a thermostatic bath set-point step change from 18 to 42 0.1 C at steady
state.
The liquid ow was high enough to ensure the same temperature on the whole aluminium plate surface.

Computer

3. Mathematical model
Model equations have been derived including the following
simplied assumptions:
(i) Microcapsules are homogeneous and uniformly distributed
inside the wallboard.
(ii) The total volume of the wallboard is constant. The high
porosity of the gypsum wallboard approximately 41% of its
volume allows the expansion of the microcapsules when
the PCM melts [4].
(iii) The contribution of the PCM latent heat to the storage
capacity of the wallboard is established by the variation of
the apparent specic heat capacity with the temperature.
(iv) Thermal conductivities and densities of the building materials are independent of temperature but different for solid
and liquid phases. Thus, the PCM density and conductivity
are function of its melted fraction.
(v) Taking into account the experimental set up and the operating conditions, the heat transfer through the wall is onedimensional.
(vi) The variation of the thermo-physical properties with the
temperature of the insulating material is negligible due to
the smaller range of temperature in which it is working.
The mathematical model is based on the Fourier heat conduction equation for one dimension:



@q  h
@
@T

k
@t
@x
@x

where h is the enthalpy, x is the heat ux direction, T is the temperature, t is the time and q and k are the wall density and thermal
conductivity, respectively.
The dependence of the enthalpy with the temperature is given by:

h cap
p T  T R

where TR is the reference temperature.

Heat Flux Sensor

16: 40,5

Thermocuples
Peristaltic
Rotameter
Pump

USB Ports

PV 38,4 STATUS
SV 37 RUN _

Gypsum Block

RUN

Aluminium Cell
Cork insulating structure

Thermostatic Bath

Fig. 1. Experimental set up for studying the thermal behaviour of wallboards.

933

A.M. Borreguero et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 930937

The wall density and conductivity at any temperature can be

obtained as function of the initial densities and conductivities of
the original materials, respectively. They depend on the fraction
of melted PCM (lf) at each temperature. The fraction of melted
PCM can be obtained as:

lf 0

T 0 < T 6 T end ;
T > T end ;

RT

lf

ceff dT
T0 p
R T end
ceff
p dT
T0

lf 1

where T0 and Tend are the initial and nal temperature of PCM melting point, respectively.
Thus, if the total volume is assumed constant, the wallboard
density and conductivity at any temperature can be obtained as
follow:

c
X

sol
qi  wi wPCM  lf  qliq
PCM 1:0  lf  qPCM

i1

c
X

liq

sol

ki  wi wPCM  lf  kPCM 1:0  lf  kPCM

i1

where qi, ki and wi are the density, conductivity and weight fraction
of the building materials excepting the PCM, wPCM is the weight
liq
fraction of the PCM, qliq
PCM and kPCM are the density and the conducsol
sol
tivity of the liquid PCM, and qPCM and kPCM are their respective solidphase density and conductivity. c is the number of wall
building materials excepting the PCM and i is a counter. Finally, lf
is the melted fraction of PCM.
Taking into account the temperature dependence of h and q, Eq.
(1) becomes:
@
k  @T

@T
@x
@x

ap
ap
ap
@
q
@t c  q c  q  @cp  T  T
R
p
p
@T
@T


dT 
Q_
dx x0

x 0;

k

t 0;

T T ini

10

x d;



dT 
dT 
kcork  
k 
dx xd
dx xd

11

where Q_ is the entering heat ux, Tini is the initial temperature of

the gypsum block, kcork is the cork thermal conductivity and d is
the width of the gypsum block.
For the insulated zone, Eq. (1) becomes:

@T
@
kcork
@T


@t @x qcork  ccork
@x
p
t 0;



@
@T
acork 
@x
@x

T T cork
ini

x d dcork ;


dT 
kcork  
hc  T  T 1
dx xddcork

4. Simulation results
Simulations were carried out to observe the effect of physical
parameters on the wall thermal behaviour taking into account
the characteristics of the experimental set-up designed for this
purpose and described in previous experimental section.
Inputs to the model:
Three les should be enter to the model
 The instantaneous heat ux. Fig. 2 shows a typical heat ux
curve when a cool gypsum block is placed on a hot at plate
for a step change of the thermostatic bath set-point from 18
to 42 0.1 C.
 The variation of the environmental temperature with time. For
simulation purpose, a constant temperature T 1 23  C was
considered.
 The apparent specic heat capacity with temperature. Fig. 3
shows the cap
p curves for the gypsum wallboards with different
PCMs percentages.
The cap
p curves for gypsum and microcapsules were obtained by
means of MDSC. The theoretical curves containing 5.0, 10.0 and
50.0% by weight of microcapsules were calculated as a combination of both original materials.
The following parameters should be enter or estimated by the
model:
Thermo-physical properties of the wallboard materials
 Microcapsules containing PCMs were made of polystyrene and
Rubitherm RT27. The values reported in literature for the
thermal conductivity of the polystyrene are in the range of

240
200

12

13
14

where qcork, ccork

and acork are the density, heat capacity and thermal
p
diffusivity of the cork, respectively; hc is the convection heat-transfer coefcient; T1 is the environmental temperature and dcork is the
width of the insulation slab.
The above system of equations was solved by nite differences
[29]. By applying this mathematical technique one can reduce the
partial differential equations (8) and (12) to a stiff system of ordinary differential equations taking into account the boundary conditions. The Rosenbrock method [30] was used to integrate

Heat Flow (W/m2)

T 6 T0;

numerically this stiff set of ordinary differential equations. The tting parameters of this model can be the unknown thermal conductivities of the wallboard components and cork. These
parameters are obtained by minimizing the sum of the square of
offsets (difference between experimental and theoretical values)
by means of nonlinear least square tting. Besides, the convection
heat-transfer coefcient can be obtained for the experimental conditions. The number of parameters can be reduced if a pure material is used as wallboard.
A Visual Basic application was developed for solving this model
and the Marquardt algorithm was implemented to determine the
unknown parameters [31].

160
120
80
40
0

5000

10000

15000

20000

Time (s)
Fig. 2. Typical inlet heat ow to the gypsum blocks as a function of time when the
temperature of the thermostatic bath was changed from 18 to 42 C using a liquid
ow of 5.56  106 m3/s.

A.M. Borreguero et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 930937

14000

36

12000

34

10000

Temperature (C)

Heat Capacity (J/kgC)

934

Microcapsules Content
(wt%)
0.0
5.0
10.0
50.0
100.0

8000
6000
4000

32
30
28
26
24

2000
0

Microcapsules Content
(wt%)
0.0
5.0
10.0
50.0
100.0

22
0

10

20

30

40

5000

0.041.6 W/m C [3234] and a value of 0.08 W/m C was used

by Han et al. [33] for similar applications. A value of 0.2 W/m C
for the thermal conductivity of parafn wax independently of
its physical state (solidliquid) is reported in the commercial
data sheet. In the same way, Han et al. [33] used a density of
q = 1050 kg/m3 for the polystyrene. The parafn density for
the Rubitherm RT27 for the solid and liquid phase are reported
in the data sheet, 870 and 750 kg/m3, respectively.
 The building material used for this study is the gypsum and a
density value of q = 1130 kg/m3 was obtained by weighing
and measuring its volume.
Thermo-physical properties of the insulating material
 A cork thermal conductivity value was selected from literature,
kcork = 0.06 W/(m C) [32]. The cork density was obtained by
weighing and measuring the volume of several samples
(q = 272 kg/m3) and a specic heat capacity value of
cp = 3200 J/kg C was obtained from MDSC analysis.
Parameter of the heat-transfer by natural convection
 The convection heat-transfer coefcient. A convection heattransfer coefcient close to 9 W/m2 C has been used in literature for the same external environmental conditions [10,35].
Fig. 4 shows the effect of the different cap
p on the external block
temperature when blocks are subjected to the same external heat
ow.
As can be seen, the lower cap
p of the composite-material, the
lower the energy adsorption and the higher the external temperature. A block with a high amount of PCMs has a large capacity to
accumulate energy, absorbing the total inlet energy and the temperature effects are observed mainly in the rst layers of the block.
In this way, the variation of the external temperature is practically
negligible. On the other hand, the external wallboard temperature
for the blocks with 5.0 or 10.0 wt.% of microcapsules present a value higher than their melting temperature indicating that the input
energy (8771 J) is higher than their storage energy capacities by
phase change 985.1 and 1970.1 J, respectively. It is further possible
to asses that the presence of microcapsules has an insulating effect
due to the decrease in nal temperature at the steady state condition (20,000 s) with the microcapsules contents. This is due to the
lower thermal conductivities of the microcapsules components
compare to the gypsum one. On the other hand, wallboards with

15000

20000

cork


Fig. 4. Effect of cap
p on the wallboard thermal behaviour. T ini 23 C; T ini 23 C;
kgypsum 0:19 W=m  C; kcork 0:06 W=m  C and ccork
3200 J=kg.
p

microcapsules contents of 50.0 and 100.0% by weight exhibited

an external temperature that was always lower than the melting
point of the parafn wax. This is due to the energy storage capacities of these two blocks 9850.7 and 19701.3 J, respectively, which
are higher than the input energy.
Fig. 5 shows the effect of the thermal conductivity on the external temperature of the wallboard. As can be seen, the wallboard
temperature increases sharply with increasing values of the thermal conductivity. In the same way, the simulation results conrmed the thermal conductivity effect since the lower this value,
the lower external block temperature at the steady state. Thus, if
superconductors, like carbon nanobers with thermal conductivities higher than 150 W/m C [36], were incorporated into the
microcapsules the wall would absorb or release the energy in a faster way [37].
5. Results and discussion
5.1. Insulating cork characterization
As was mentioned above, the wallboard results were dependent
on the characteristics of the used cork. The used cork was characterized using a piece of cork as wallboard. The unique unknown
thermal property was its thermal conductivity. Thus only two
tting parameters of the model are unknown: the cork thermal
conductivity and the convection heat-transfer coefcient.

34
32

Temperarure (C)

Fig. 3. Apparent specic heat capacity as a function of temperature for gypsum,

microcapsules and theoretical curves for gypsums containing 5.0, 10.0 and
50.0 wt.% of microcapsule.

10000

Time (s)

Temperature (C)

30
28

Thermal Conductivity W/(mC)

k = 0.19
k = 0.33
k = 0.48
k = 0.76

26
24
22
0

5000

10000

15000

20000

Time (s)
Fig. 5. Effect of the thermal conductivity on the wallboard thermal behaviour.



cork
T ini 23  C; T cork
3200 J=kg C.
ini 23 C; kcork 0:06 W=m C and c p

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A.M. Borreguero et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 930937

Fig. 6 shows experimental and theoretical curves for the external cork temperature, when this worked as both, wallboard and
insulating material. As can be seen, a close agreement between
the experimental and the theoretical curves was achieved and a
thermal conductivity of 0.1 W/m C and a convection heat-transfer
coefcient hc, of 12 W/m2 C were found. These values are similar
to those reported in literature and used in the previous simulation
section [10,35]. The small difference between both curves is due to
the variation of the environmental temperature that provokes
noise in the measured external temperature of the cork, which
can be avoided by placing the testing cell into an isothermal
chamber.
The entering heat ow and the outlet heat ow calculated using
Eq. (14) are shown in Fig. 7. As expected, both ows equalized
when temperature prole in the block reached its steady state. This
behaviour allows us to say that the obtained parameters are adequate to reproduce the thermal cork behaviour and also the heat
losses by natural convection.
5.2. Gypsum wallboard characterization
As commented above, one of the main reasons for the development of microcapsules containing PCMs is its possible application

Temperature (C)

32

28

24

External Temperature
Wallboard
Experimental
Theoretical
Insulating cork
Experimental
Theoretical

20

4000

8000

12000

16000

Time (s)
Fig. 6. Experimental and theoretical curves for the external cork temperature when
working as wallboard and insulate material. Experimental condition: Liquid

ow = 5.56  106 m3/s; T ini 22:8  C and T cork
ini 23:3 C.

in solar energy storage systems, saving energy while maintaining

comfort inside the building.
In order to evaluate the improvement in the thermal behaviour
of wallboards when they are doped with microcapsules containing
PCMs, three gypsum blocks with the same dimensions and different weight percentages of microcapsules (0.0, 4.6 and 6.4 wt.%)
were built. As commented before, the developed model requires
the apparent heat capacity of each studied wallboard (Fig. 8). This
gure can be used to obtain the storage energy capacity of each
block by integrating the cp curves in a specic temperature range.
Results indicate that the storage energy capacities of the developed
blocks combining the sensible and latent heat in the range from 15
to 30 C were 623.82, 699.90 and 728.23 kJ/m2 for microcapsules
contents of 0.0, 4.6 and 6.4 wt.%, respectively. According to these
data, the microcapsules addition enhances the storage energy
capacity of the wallboards in 12.19 or 16.74% with the incorporation of 4.6 or 6.4 wt.% of microcapsules containing PCMs,
respectively.
Fig. 9 shows the inlet data proles required for the model. As can
be seen, the inlet heat ows are dependent on the environmental
temperature, being higher as lower the environmental temperature
is. On taking into account that the external conditions obtained in
this studies are similar to those of the cork experiments, the
obtained parameters kcork = 0.1 W/m C and hc = 12 W/m2 C can
be considered suitable to nd the thermal conductivity of the
pure gypsum wallboard. Hence, the gypsum thermal conductivity
becomes the unique unknown parameter of the mathematical model to characterize the wallboard behaviour of the pure
gypsum.
A value of the gypsum thermal conductivity of k = 0.26 W/m C
was obtained with an absolute deviation between the experimental and theoretical values lower than 0.5%. This parameter is in the
range from 0.19 to 0.76 W/m C of the gypsum thermal conductivity reported by Feldman et al. [6] and Chen et al. [38].
The obtained thermal conductivity for the pure gypsum was
further used in the model to predict the thermal behaviours of
the wallboard doped with microcapsules. The absolute deviation
between experimental and theoretical values of 0.62, 1.03 for 4.6
and 6.4% microcapsule contents by weight were obtained,
respectively.
As can be seen in Fig. 10, the experimental curves of the external wallboard temperatures for wallboards with different microcapsule contents were well reproduced by using the apparent
heat capacity and the parameters for the original materials avoiding a new tting process. Thus, the behaviour of a wallboard

1400

100

60

Heat Capacity (J/kgC)

Heat Flux (W/m2)

80
Inlet Heat Flux
Outlet Heat Flux

40
20
0
-20

4000

8000

12000

16000

Time (s)
Fig. 7. Entering and outlet heat ows using the cork as the wallboard. Experimental

condition: Liquid ow = 5.56  106 m3/s; T ini 22:8  C and T cork
ini 23:3 C.

1300

1200

1100
Microcapsules Content
(wt%)
0.0
4.6
6.4

1000

900

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Temperature (C)
Fig. 8. Experimental apparent specic heat capacities of wallboards with different
microcapsule contents as a temperature function.

936

A.M. Borreguero et al. / Applied Energy 88 (2011) 930937

(a)

12

300

Thickness Reduction (%)

Heat Flow (W/m2)

250
Microcapsules Content
(wt.%)
0.0
4.6
6.4

200
150
100
50
0
-50

10
8
6
4
2
0

4000

8000

12000

16000

Temperature (C)

(b)

28

Fig. 11. Equivalence between the microcapsule content and the percentage of
wallboard thickness reduction.

26

Once the wallboards were characterized, it is possible to relate

the effect of their microcapsule content with an equivalent wallboard thickness. In this way, Fig. 11 was obtained using the apparent heat capacity for each wallboard doped with PCMs, using the
inputs and the external temperature obtained for pure gypsum.
In this case, the wall thickness becomes the tting parameter.
As can be seen, the higher the content of PCM into the wall, the
lower wall thickness was required for offering the same comfort level. According to these results, the incorporation of 5 wt.% of
microcapsules containing PCMs allows to reduce the gypsum
thickness an 8.5%, maintaining the comfort conditions.

24
Microcapsules Content
(wt.%)
0.0
4.6
6.4

22

20

4000

8000

12000

16000

Time (s)

6. Conclusions

Fig. 9. Input proles to the model to predict the wallboard behaviours. (a) Input
heat ows; (b) environmental temperatures.

containing different amount of microcapsules can be predicted by

using the developed model, a curve of the apparent heat capacity
for the whole wallboard and using the physical and thermal
parameters of the original materials.

32

Temperature (C)

Wallboard Microcapsule Content (wt %)

Time (s)

28

24

Microcapsules Content (wt.%)

Experimental Theoretical
0.0
0.0
4.6
4.6
6.4
6.4

20

The experimental set-up designed for this research, with the

aim of obtaining the thermal conductivity of solid materials, has
shown to be suitable for the thermal characterization of building
materials. A good agreement between experimental and predicted
data for gypsum blocks with three different microcapsules contents has been obtained. Therefore, the developed mathematical
model based on the Fourier heat conduction equation for one
dimension allow to demonstrate that the wallboard thermal
behaviour is only dependent on the physical and thermal properties of the original materials used to build it once the latent heat
of the PCM has been considered as an apparent sensible heat in
its melting temperature range. The gypsum thermal conductivity
was independent on wallboard microcapsules contents, getting a
tted value in the range of those reported in literature. Furthermore, it was observed that the higher the PCM content in the wallboard, the higher storage energy capacity and the lower wall
thickness was required in order to set the same level of comfort.
The obtained results showed that these kinds of materials can be
used to improve the level of comfort, save energy in buildings,
and even reduce the weight of a wallboard.
Acknowledgments

4000

8000

12000

16000

20000

Time (s)
Fig. 10. Experimental and theoretical external temperature proles of wallboards
containing 0.0, 4.6 and 6.4 wt.% of microcapsules. Experimental conditions: Liquid

ow = 5.56  106 m3/s; for gypsum T ini 20:4  C and T cork
ini 21:8 C; for 4.6 wt.%

of microcapsules T ini 23:0  C and T cork
ini 24:8 C and for 6.4 wt.% of microcapsules

T ini 21:5  C
and
T cork
Parameters:
kcork 0:1 W=m  C
and
ini 23:4 C.
hc 12 W=m2  C.

Financial support from Acciona Infraestructures S.A., and the

fellowship and grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and
Innovation are gratefully acknowledged.
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