Solar Energy 163 (2018) 113–121

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Solar Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

Thermal performance of phase change materials (PCM)-enhanced cellulose T

insulation in passive solar residential building walls
⁎
Kyoung Ok Leea,b, Mario A. Medinaa, , Xiaoqin Suna,c, Xing Jind
a
Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering Department, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA
b
Department of Educational Facilities, Gyeongsangnam-do Changwon Office of Education, Changwon-si, Gyeongsangnam-do 51439, Republic of Korea
c
School of Energy and Power Engineering, Changsha University of Science & Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410004, PR China
d
Key Laboratory of Urban and Architectural Heritage Conservation of Ministry of Education, School of Architecture, Southeast University, No. 2 Sipailou, Nanjing
210096, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Building walls outfitted with phase change materials (PCM) offer the potential for energy savings, peak space
Phase change materials (PCM) cooling load shifting, and increased thermal comfort in occupied buildings. However, integrating PCM into
Building insulation already established wall types, which are comprised of several layers (e.g., siding, insulation, wallboard, etc.)
Thermal energy storage poses several challenges and extra construction time. One potential solution to incorporate PCM into walls would
Wall heat transfer
be to directly mix the PCM with insulation during the manufacturing process of the insulation. Cellulose in-
Building enclosure
sulation offers this opportunity. This paper evaluated the thermal performance of PCM-enhanced cellulose in-
sulation in residential walls. The PCM was integrated via direct mixing with the insulation. Differential scanning
calorimeter (DSC) tests showed that the cellulose would not affect the latent heat of fusion of the PCM in the
mixture in a significant manner. The thermal performance of north, east, south, and west facing residential walls
with and without PCMs was experimentally evaluated using two identical test houses under full weather con-
ditions. The results showed that the daily average peak heat flux reduction for individual walls was 25.4%, while
the hourly average peak heat flux reduction for the sum of all four walls was 20.1%. The thermal performance
was evaluated in terms of wall heat flux comparisons between standard and PCM-enhanced insulation walls.

1. Introduction
The number of residential dwellings with installed air-conditioning
systems has increased over the past couple of decades. In the U.S.
household electricity consumption resulting from the use of air con-
ditioning alone was estimated at about 189 billion kWh in 2014, which
represented 13% of the total annual electrical consumption (U.S. EIA,
2015).
The current state of energy supply and demand in the country and
the projected growth in residential and small commercial buildings in
the near future create the need to formulate ways to manage electricity
peak loads from air conditioning systems. There are several ways to
approach this problem with demand-side management. Shifting part of
the peak load to off-peak time by adding building thermal mass is a
promising approach. As promising as this approach may be, however, if
common building materials were used, large masses of these materials
would be required. Phase change materials (PCMs), on the other hand,
offer the potential to add thermal mass to building enclosure compo-
nents without requiring large masses of materials (Song et al., 2018).
This is the case because small volume of PCMs absorb relatively large
amounts of heat during phase change. When PCMs are placed in
building walls, they absorb a major part of the heat that is being
transferred from the hot outside environment during the daytime and
release the absorbed heat at night and early morning hours. As a result,
part of the peak space-cooling load is reduced and part is shifted to off-
peak hours. In terms of comparison Benard et al. (1985) found that for
the same thermal performance, a wall outfitted with PCMs would only
need about one-twelfth of the volume of a concrete wall.
The various ways of incorporating PCMs into building materials
were thoroughly explained by Lee (2014). These were: (1) imbibing
(Feczkó et al., 2016), which is a technology where building enclosure
materials, such as gypsum wallboard, brick or concrete are dipped into
a melted PCM bath where the PCM is absorbed into the material’s in-
ternal pores; (2) direct incorporation (Su et al., 2017), which is a
technology where liquid or powdered PCM is directly added to building
materials such as gypsum, concrete, or plaster during manufacturing or
directly mixed with building insulation materials such as cellulose; (3)
macro-encapsulation (Berthou et al., 2015), which is a technology that

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mmedina@ku.edu (M.A. Medina).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2018.01.086
Received 20 November 2017; Received in revised form 23 January 2018; Accepted 29 January 2018
Available online 02 February 2018
0038-092X/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
K.O. Lee et al. Solar Energy 163 (2018) 113–121

Nomenclature ce control house-east wall

cn control house-north wall
q (W/m2) heat flux cs control house-south wall
cw control house-west wall
Abbreviations r retrofit house
re retrofit house-east wall
DSC differential scanning calorimeter rn retrofit house-north wall
FCU fan coil unit rs retrofit house-south wall
PCM phase change material rw retrofit house-west wall

Subscripts

c control house

encapsulates PCMs in relatively large container such as tubes, polymer
pouches or other, usually larger than 1 mm in diameter; (4) micro-
encapsulation (Young et al., 2018), which is a technology where PCM
particles are enclosed in thin and sealed films of sizes up to 1000 µm;
and (5) shape-stabilized PCMs (Kim et al., 2017), which is a technology
where the PCMs are dispersed in another phase of supporting materials
(e.g., high density polyethylene) to form a stable composite material.
All of the above have advantages and disadvantages and some are more
practical than others. For example, imbibing requires that building
components (e.g., wallboards) be submerged into baths of PCMs. In this
case, an imbibed PCM-wallboard would adversely affect moisture
transfer through a building wall. In the direct incorporation method,
wallboard, concrete, and/or other wall components (e.g., brick) may
see their structural properties adversely affected. Macro-encapsulation
may be a difficult method to implement because at the moment there is
not an existing building construction trade that would undertake such
work. On the other hand, the mixing of PCM with cellulose or similar
products (e.g., loose fill insulation) during the manufacturing process of
the insulation is a promising one. This is the impetus behind the re-
search herein, which is presented to show that PCM-enhanced insula-
tion would be able to reduce the heat transfer rate through building
walls and other enclosing surfaces. Other design issues, depending on
which type of PCMs are used (e.g., paraffin, hydrated salts) must also be
addressed. This part is beyond the scope of this paper.
For the last three decades various thermal storage-building
materials have been developed and assessed both experimentally and
via other means (Lee et al., 2015). In one work a layer of PCM was
placed in the middle of a brick wall and ceiling system (Ismail and
Castro, 1997). This work demonstrated that the PCMs were instru-
mental in maintaining the indoor air temperature very close to the
established comfort limits. The effects of PCMs in insulation layers of
lightweight walls were simulated using a dynamic model. It was found
that the maximum heat consumption reduction was about 15% when
the PCMs were located approximately in the middle of the wall (Fateh
et al., 2017). Imbibed PCM wallboards were developed and tested by
(Heim and Clarke 2004). These PCM-wallboards showed that internal
surface temperature fluctuations could be dampened, peak heat fluxes
could be reduced, and peak heat fluxes could be shifted in time (Lee
et al., 2015b). Concrete panels with mixed microencapsulated PCM
were tested by (Cabeza et al. 2007). These field tests demonstrated the
potential for energy saving. However, according to this research, the
presence of the PCM would adversely affect the compressive strength of
the concrete. Research on PCM-enhanced cellulose insulation was
conducted by Kośny et al. (2008). A paraffin PCM was first micro-
encapsulated using acrylic polymer shells with a diameter between 2
and 20 µm. Then, the newly created spheres were added to the in-
sulation. The performance of the mixture was tested in a dynamic hot-
box in a laboratory setting. For the first five-hour ramp period, the
PCM-enhanced cellulose material reduced the total heat flux through
the wall by over 40% when compared to a control wall with the same

Fig. 1. Schematic of experimental setup.

House A House B

200 CFM FCU

Thermocouple
T/C

T/C

T/C

T/C

Flowrate
Globe M 3/8" Copper Tubing M
Transmitter
M

Valve
Electromagnetic
Valve Return Return

Thermostat Supply

Water Pump

Check
Valve

Water Chiller
Tank

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K.O. Lee et al. Solar Energy 163 (2018) 113–121

6
26.42 oC
4

Heat flow (mW)

S 136.3 J/g
E 0
137.5 J/g

-2

Thermocouples -4
Fig. 2. Test houses (E: east-facing wall; S: south-facing wall).
27.93 oC
-6
18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34
Cavity for insulation Exo UP o
Temperature ( C)
Fig. 4. DSC curve of pure paraffin.

25.32 oC
2

Heat flow (mW)

60.95 J/g
0
60.45 J/g

-2

28.13 oC
-4
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32
Exo UP o
Temperature ( C)
Fig. 3. Internal structure of test house walls.
Fig. 5. DSC curve of paraffin cellulose mixture.

Table 1
Sensors and their accuracy. 30
Control House
Sensor Range Accuracy (% deviation) 25 Pre-retrofit House

20
Heat Flux (W/m2)

Heat Flux Meter 0–3.1 × 105 W/m2 2%

Type T T/C −18 to 93 °C 0.6 °C
15

10
Table 2
Manufacturer property data of paraffin-based PCM (Rubitherm® Technologies GmbH, 5
2015).
0
Property Value
-5
Approximate melting point (°C) 28
Approximate solidification point (°C) 26 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18
Latent heat of fusion (kJ/kg) 147 Time of Day
Density (kg/m3) 870/750 (solid/liquid)
Fig. 6. Heat fluxes through the west walls during calibration tests.
Conductivity (W/m °C) 0.2

kind and level of insulation. The thermal resistance of the mixture did
not change significantly when compared to the control insulation
system.
Field tests of PCM-enhanced wall insulation systems were conducted
using macro-encapsulation methods with paraffin-based PCM (Zhang
et al., 2005) and hydrated salt-based PCM (Lee and Medina, 2016). The
performance of these systems was tested using two side-by-side houses
of identical construction and under full weather conditions. Results
indicated that the peak heat fluxes through the walls were reduced by
21.0% and 27.3% when paraffin-based PCM and hydrated salt-based
PCM were used, respectively. The performance of structural insulated
panel (SIP) outfitted with macro-encapsulated PCM using two side-by-
side test houses exposed to full weather conditions was studied by
Medina et al. (2008) and in a laboratory dynamic wall simulator was
studied by Medina and Zhu (2008). These studies concluded that
thermal storage capability of the SIPs could be enhanced by adding
PCMs. PCM for insulation of residential buildings were studied during

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K.O. Lee et al. Solar Energy 163 (2018) 113–121

80 in the summer. This research performed field tests on test houses lo-
Control House
70 cated under full weather conditions rather than in an indoor laboratory
Pre-retrofit House
setting. The main task of this research was to assess the potential to
60 reduce peak cooling loads via experimental research using side-by-side
Temperature (°C)

50 test houses under full weather conditions.

40
2. Experimental set-up
30
20 2.1. Test houses

10 Field experiments were conducted using two small-scale test houses

0 located in the central part of the U.S. (DOE Region 4). The test houses
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 had dimensions of 1.83 m × 1.83 m × 1.52 m and used typical re-
Time of Day sidential frame wall construction and geometry. In each test house, a
Fig. 7. Exterior surface temperatures of the west walls during calibration tests.
window with an area of 0.32 m2 was placed in the south-facing wall.
Because of the difficulty in maintaining indoor space thermal control, it
is common and well accepted to use reduced size replicas of buildings
50
Control House that have the same geometry and use the same materials as average
Pre-retrofit House sized dwellings. The schematic of the experimental setup and photo of
40 the test houses are shown in Figs. 1 and 2, respectively. The internal
Temperature (°C)

structure of the walls, showing the structural framing and siding, is

30
20
10
0 on east-facing wall, four on the south-facing wall, and four on the
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18
Time of Day
Fig. 8. Interior surface temperatures of the west walls during calibration tests.
August 16–17, 2016 with two identical rooms according to the thick-
ness of the PCM and according to the orientation (North wall, South
wall, East wall, West wall, and ceiling) (Hasan et al., 2018). It was
reported that the cooling load was reduced by 20.9% using 1 cm PCM in
all walls. Copper pipes were used to encapsulate the PCM. A horizontal
pipe arrangement performed better than a vertical pipe arrangement.
Later, Evers et al. (2010) tested paraffin-based PCM mixed with cellu-
lose insulation using a dynamic wall simulator. The results showed
reductions in peak heat transfer rates by 9.2%.
The overall objective and novelty of this research was to find a
practical method by which PCMs could be incorporated into the wall
insulation of residential buildings to reduce the peak space cooling load
presented in Fig. 3. The houses were air-conditioned.
Type T thermocouples were used to measure exterior wall surface
temperatures, interior wall surface temperatures, and indoor air tem-
peratures. Heat flux meters were installed on the interior side of each
wall to measure the heat transfer rates per unit area through the walls.
The accuracy of the temperature and heat flux sensors is shown in
Table 1. Six heat flux meters were installed on the west-facing wall, two
0 6 12 18 north-facing wall. The data from the sensors on each wall were aver-
aged. The different number of sensors per wall were the results of
features found in each wall. For example, a significant portion of the
east wall was used by a fan coil unit (FCU). The south wall had a
window. Part of the north wall was a removable door. The west wall did
not have any of the mentioned features, and therefore, it had more
space for sensors. A data logger and a computer collected the data at
intervals of 10 s, which were later averaged on an hourly basis.
2.2. PCM properties
The optimal phase transition temperatures for realizing acceptable
simple payback period should be 3 °C higher than the mean outdoor air
temperature (Sun et al., 2014). According the data from U.S. climate
data, the average outdoor air temperature in August is 25 °C. Therefore,
the PCM with phase change temperature of 26–28 °C was chosen. It was
a paraffin-based PCM and its properties are shown in Table 2.

60
30 Control House-Out
Control House
North Wall Temperature (OC)

55 Control House-In
25 Retrofit House Retrofit House-Out
50 Retrofit House-In
20
Heat Flux (W/m2)

45
15
40
10 35
5 30

0 25

-5 20
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18
Time of Day Time of day
(a) Heat fluxes (b) Wall temperatures
Fig. 9. Heat fluxes and wall temperatures of the north walls during retrofit tests.

116
K.O. Lee et al. Solar Energy 163 (2018) 113–121

30 70
Control House Control House-Out
Retrofit House Control House-In

East Wall Temperature (OC)

25
60 Retrofit House-Out
Retrofit House-In
20
Heat Flux (W/m2)

50
15

10 40
5
30
0

-5 20
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0
Time of Day Time of day
(a) Heat fluxes (b) Wall temperatures
Fig. 10. Heat fluxes and wall temperatures of the east walls during retrofit tests.

30 70
Control House Control House-Out

South Wall Temperature (OC)

25 Retrofit House Control House-In
60 Retrofit House-Out
20 Retrofit House-In
Heat Flux (W/m2)

50
15

10 40
5
30
0

-5 20
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0
Time of Day Time of day
(a) Heat fluxes (b) Wall temperatures
Fig. 11. Heat fluxes and wall temperatures of the south walls during retrofit tests.

30 80
Control House Control House-Out
West Wall Temperature (OC)

Retrofit House Control House-In

25 70 Retrofit House-Out
Retrofit House-In
20
Heat Flux (W/m2)

60
15
50
10
40
5

0 30

-5 20
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0
Time of Day Time of day

(a) Heat fluxes (b) Wall temperatures

Fig. 12. Heat fluxes and wall temperatures of the west walls during retrofit tests.

To investigate if the mixing of PCM with cellulose resulted in sig-
nificant property changes of the PCM, differential scanning calorimeter
(DSC) tests were performed at heating and cooling rates of 1 °C/min
with a mass ratio of paraffin to cellulose of 0.7–1. The results are shown
in Figs. 4 and 5. From the results, it was concluded that when mixed
with cellulose, the melting and solidification temperatures of the pure
paraffin did not change significantly. The latent heat of fusion of the
mixture of PCM with cellulose, however, decreased from 137.5 J/g
(pure PCM) to 60.45 J/g upon melting. Assuming that the cellulose did
not change the properties of the paraffin and the latent heat of fusion of
the pure paraffin from Fig. 4 were used, the latent heat of fusion of the
paraffin and cellulose mixture would be56.83 J/g [137.5 × 0.7/
(0.7 + 1)]. The test result was 60.45 J/g. The difference of 6.37% may
come from the method used to integrate the area under the curve, an

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K.O. Lee et al. Solar Energy 163 (2018) 113–121

50 paraffin-based PCM was melted in a water bath. Once melted, it was

sprayed into the cellulose insulation where it was evenly mixed. After
40 mixing, the PCM-insulation mixture was blown into the wall cavities of
the test house as it is normally done in real practice. For a direct
Temperature (°C)

comparison with previous research, the PCM concentration in the wall

30
was defined in terms of the mass of the gypsum wallboard. For the wall
used in this research a 30% concentration uptake of PCM by the wall
20 was calculated to be equivalent to a ratio of 0.7–1.0 PCM to cellulose
insulation.
10
3. Results and discussion
0
3.1. Calibration tests
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18
Time of Day
Calibration tests were performed to set the baseline in relation to
Fig. 13. Outdoor air temperature corresponding to the data of Figs. 9–12.
temperatures and heat transfer between both test houses before the
retrofit. For the calibration tests, plain cellulose insulation was installed
Table 3 in both test houses. The heat fluxes through the walls, interior and
Heat flux peak reductions for the north and east walls. exterior wall surface temperatures, and indoor air temperatures were
monitored, recorded, stored, and analyzed. One example of heat flux
Date North Wall East Wall
through the west walls of both houses is shown in Fig. 6. The corre-
qC,N (W/ qR,N (qC,N-qR,N)/ qC,E (W/ qR,E (W/ (qC,E-qR,E)/ sponding exterior and interior surface temperatures are shown in Figs. 7
m2) (W/m2) qC,N (%) m2) m2) qC,E (%) and 8, respectively. From these figures, it was inferred that the thermal
responses of the two houses were nearly identical prior to adding the
4-Aug 9.1 6.6 27.7 21.86 13.88 36.5
5-Aug 9.7 7.4 24.1 21.98 14.21 35.4
PCM-enhanced insulation to one of the test houses. Any differences in
6-Aug 11.4 8.7 23.1 23.06 13.76 40.3 temperatures and/or heat fluxes in later tests would be solely the result
7-Aug 10.9 8.5 22.3 24.05 16.49 31.4 of adding the PCM.
9-Aug 10.3 7.6 26.1 22.96 14.50 36.8
13-Aug 11.7 9.8 16.3 22.66 14.34 36.7
3.2. Retrofit tests
14-Aug 13.4 10.6 21.1 26.06 17.11 34.3
15-Aug 13.5 10.7 21.0 26.23 17.97 31.5
16-Aug 13.3 9.9 26.0 24.10 14.27 40.8 3.2.1. Results for individual walls
17-Aug 9.5 6.5 31.5 15.86 10.26 35.3 In the analyses that followed, the house that was retrofitted with the
20-Aug 11.7 7.3 37.5 23.06 11.75 49.0 PCM-enhanced insulation was referred to as the “retrofit house” and the
21-Aug 11.1 8.3 25.0 23.41 16.28 30.5
25-Aug 8.4 6.4 24.1 22.55 11.56 48.7
walls as “PCM-enhanced walls.” The house that remained with the
26-Aug 9.0 5.0 44.8 19.05 8.43 55.7 standard cellulose insulation was referred to as the “control house” and
the walls as “control walls.” Because the focus of this research was the
Avg. 10.9 8.1 26.0 22.64 13.92 38.5
space cooling load reduction and load shift in time, only summer data
were studied. Heat fluxes and the interior and exterior surface tem-
Table 4 peratures of each wall were monitored. Samples of wall heat flux data
Heat flux peak reductions for the south and west walls. and wall surface temperatures are presented in Figs. 9–12. The outdoor
air temperature corresponding to the testing period presented in
Date South Wall West Wall
Figs. 9–12 is shown in Fig. 13.
qC,S (W/ qR,S (W/ (qC,S-qR,S)/ qC,W (W/ qR,W (W/ (qC,W-qR,W)/ The results demonstrated that for all four walls the peak hour for the
m2) m2) qC,S (%) m2) m2) qC,W (%) heat flux through the PCM-enhanced walls lagged a couple of hours
behind those of the control walls, thus proving the concept of space
4-Aug 16.58 12.51 24.5 18.01 14.86 17.5
cooling load shifting. The average lag time was about 1.5 h for all four
5-Aug 16.81 13.62 19.0 17.00 12.96 23.8
6-Aug 18.59 14.70 20.9 20.11 18.38 8.6 walls with the largest difference of 3 h being observed on the north wall
7-Aug 18.20 14.23 21.8 22.27 19.27 13.5 and the smallest difference of 1 h being observed on the west wall. The
9-Aug 20.60 17.63 14.4 27.38 23.51 14.1 peak heat flux values for the four PCM-enhanced walls were reduced by
13-Aug 22.02 20.46 7.1 24.61 21.35 13.2 different percentages as shown in Tables 3 and 4. It was found that the
14-Aug 22.60 22.09 2.3 25.68 22.94 10.7
east and north walls had larger peak heat flux reductions while the west
15-Aug 23.05 22.70 1.5 25.43 20.96 17.6
16-Aug 22.04 21.19 3.9 22.95 15.55 32.2 and south walls had relatively smaller reductions. As depicted in the
17-Aug 18.42 15.21 17.4 20.44 13.84 32.3 graphs of Figs. 9–12 (August 5–7), the heat fluxes of the PCM-enhanced
20-Aug 22.77 13.58 40.4 20.15 15.65 22.3 walls were lower than those of the control walls before reaching their
21-Aug 21.53 16.04 25.5 17.82 13.33 25.2
corresponding peaks and larger after the peaks had occurred, which
25-Aug 15.20 13.55 10.9 25.07 17.28 31.1
26-Aug 15.25 12.11 20.6 18.52 9.39 49.3
represented the phase change from solid to liquid and liquid to solid.
The average heat flux reductions were 26% for the north wall, 38.5%
Avg. 19.55 16.40 16.1 21.77 17.24 20.8
for the east wall, 16.1% for the south wall, and 20.8% for the west wall.
The indoor wall surface temperature for the retrofit house was lower
error in weighting, and/or an error from the DSC tests. than for the control house. For the west wall, the outdoor and indoor
surface temperatures were similar for the two houses, where the heat
flux reduction was the lowest during these days. The outdoor surface
2.3. Preparation of the PCM-enhanced insulation via direct mixing temperature for the retrofit house was lower than for the control house
except for the north wall. For the north wall, the outdoor surface
The PCM was integrated into the experimental walls via its direct temperature of the control house was lower because no solar radiation
mixing with cellulose. Before mixing it with the cellulose insulation, the entered through this wall directly. PCM within this wall absorbed heat

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K.O. Lee et al. Solar Energy 163 (2018) 113–121

30 90
Control House-Out
Control House
80 Control House-In
25 Retrofit House
Retrofit House-Out

Wall temperature (oC)

70 Retrofit House-In
20
Heat Flux (W/m2)

15 60

10 50

5 40

0 30

-5 20
7:30 12 16 20 0 4 8
8 12 16 20 0 4
Time of Day Time of day

(a) Heat flux (b) Wall temperature

Fig. 14. Heat flux typical of a day in which the wall temperature increased slowly (August 15).

30 90
Control House-Out
Control House
80 Control House-In
25 Retrofit House
Retrofit House-Out

Wall temperature (oC)

70 Retrofit House-In
20
Heat Flux (W/m2)

60
15
50
10
40
5 30
0 20

-5 10
8 12 16 20 0 4 7:30 12 16 20 0 4 8
Time of Day Time of day

(a) Heat flux (b) Wall temperature

Fig. 15. Heat flux typical of a day in which the wall temperature increased rapidly (August 25).

80 Table 5
Control House
Estimated space cooling load and cost savings.
70 Retrofit House
60 Date Daily direct normal qC (W/m2) qR (W/ (qC-qR)/ Cost savings
Heat Flux (W/m2)

irradiance (kWh) m2) qC (%) ($/m2)

50
4-Aug 8.90 52.86 38.55 27.08 0.03
40 5-Aug 8.81 52.79 38.73 26.64 0.03
6-Aug 8.48 58.99 44.73 24.18 0.03
30 7-Aug 5.82 60.90 47.22 22.47 0.03
9-Aug 7.85 65.51 50.84 22.39 0.03
20
13-Aug 6.43 65.17 52.82 18.94 0.02
10 14-Aug 1.52 70.72 58.31 17.55 0.02
15-Aug 7.41 71.06 57.91 18.51 0.02
0 16-Aug 1.04 66.33 48.57 26.78 0.03
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 17-Aug 3.77 51.58 36.60 29.05 0.03
Time of Day 20-Aug 2.43 62.35 38.80 37.76 0.04
21-Aug 1.47 59.29 43.28 27.01 0.03
Fig. 16. Sum of all heat fluxes through all walls during retrofit tests. 25-Aug 5.54 57.70 39.23 32.01 0.03
26-Aug 0.60 49.89 27.86 44.17 0.04

and maintained at its phase change temperature for a longer time. Avg. 5.00 60.37 44.53 26.75 0.03

In addition, it was found that the areas under the heat flux curves of
both the PCM-enhanced walls and control walls were comparable. What
of the control wall and qR is the averaged peak heat flux value of the
this means is that PCMs reduced the peak heat fluxes but on a daily
PCM-enhanced wall. Days with relatively lower wall surface tempera-
basis the PCM-enhanced insulation would not necessarily reduce the
tures were eliminated because they were not representative of typical
total heat transfer through the walls. The reason for this is that the
summer conditions. From Tables 3 and 4, it could be inferred that, as
reductions produced by the melting process in the daytime would be
expected, weather conditions affected the performance of the PCM-
cancelled out by increases in heat fluxes produced by the solidification
enhanced walls. For example, relatively cool days, which resulted in
process at night and early morning.
lower peak heat fluxes through the control walls, produced larger heat
In Tables 3 and 4, qC represents the hourly-averaged peak heat flux

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K.O. Lee et al. Solar Energy 163 (2018) 113–121

100 100
Total - Control House Total - Control House
90 Total - Retrofit House 90 Total - Retrofit House
80 North - Control House 80 West - Control House
North - Retrofit House West - Retrofit House
Heat Flux (W/m2)

Heat Flux (W/m2)

70 70
60 60
50 50
40 40
30 30
20 20
10 10
0 0
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18
Time of Day Time of Day
Fig. 17. Comparison of the north wall heat fluxes with the sum of all heat fluxes during Fig. 20. Comparison of the west wall heat fluxes with the sum of all the heat fluxes during
retrofit tests. retrofit tests.

100 rate allowing the PCM to melt at a faster rate, thus, resulting in a larger
Total - Control House
90 Total - Retrofit House heat flux reduction.
80 East - Control House
East - Retrofit House
Heat Flux (W/m2)

70
3.2.2. Combined results: all walls considered
60
The sum of the heat fluxes of the four walls is shown in Fig. 16.
50
These walls had north, south, east, and west orientations. If the radia-
40 tion heat transfer between the internal surfaces of the walls in the room
30 were neglected, the sum of the heat fluxes of the four walls would re-
20 present the total space cooling load through the walls. Because the
10 shape and orientation plans of residential buildings vary, it is difficult
0 to estimate the impact of each wall on the total heat transferred into the
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18 conditioned space. In this research, the heat that entered into room via
Time of Day the walls was added to estimate the space cooling load. The results are
shown in Table 5.
Fig. 18. Comparison of the east wall heat fluxes with the sum of all heat fluxes during
Although it was shown in Figs. 9–12 and in Tables 3 and 4 that the
retrofit tests.
peak heat fluxes for the individual walls were reduced by the applica-
tion of the PCM-enhanced insulation, the peak reduction when the heat
100
Total - Control House flux contributions of all of the walls were added hourly (i.e., the sum of
90 Total - Retrofit House the individual wall heat fluxes) was lower than the daily average of the
80 South - Control House
South - Retrofit House heat flux reductions observed on each wall. For example, take the third
Heat Flux (W/m2)

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0 walls, though the peak heat flux was reduced individually. At the mo-
0 6 12 18
Fig. 19. Comparison of the south wall heat fluxes with the sum of all the heat fluxes
during retrofit tests.
flux peak reductions. The reason for this, however, is strictly mathe-
matical. Another finding was related to the rate at which the PCM
melted within the wall, which was associated to the wall’s internal
temperature. In the cases where the internal temperature of the wall
was higher, the PCM melted at a faster rate. When this happened, the
heat absorbed by the PCM was greater and the reduction in peak heat
fluxes was larger. As an example, the heat flux through the west walls
was reduced by 31.1% on August 25; while it was reduced by only
17.6% on August 15, although the peak heat fluxes were nearly iden-
tical at around 25 W/m2. The heat fluxes through the west walls during
these two days are shown in Figs. 14 and 15. Fig. 14 presents data
collected on August 15 and Fig. 15 presents data collected on August
25. The heat flux curve for August 25 was narrow and steep, so was the
wall surface temperature. The wall temperature increased at a faster
day (August 9) in Fig. 16. For each individual wall on this day the
reductions were 26.1% (north wall), 36.8% (east wall),14.4% (south
wall), and 14.1% (west wall). The daily average heat flux reduction
using the values above would be 22.9%; however, the reduction of the
sum was 26.57%, as shown in Table 5. This happened because the peak
heat fluxes for the four walls occurred at different times during the day.
This is illustrated in Figs. 17–20 for the north, east, south, and west
0 6 12 18 0 6 12 18
ment when the sum of the all heat fluxes reached its peak, the heat flux
Time of Day
values of these three walls were about the same or even slightly higher
than those of the control walls.
For the PCM-enhanced insulation, it was found that only the PCM-
enhanced insulation installed on the west wall affected the peak re-
duction in a significant manner. The heat fluxes through the west wall
were higher than those for the other walls in the afternoons when the
peak of the sum of the heat fluxes through the walls occurred. That is,
the west walls heat fluxes were dominant in the peak of the aggregate.
Therefore, to get a large reduction in peak wall space cooling load, the
west wall’s peak heat flux should be reduced as much as possible.
Furthermore, it appeared that PCM-enhanced insulation in the north,
east, and south adversely contributed to the overall results in heat flux.
On average, the reduction of the space cooling load was 26.75%. The
daily cost savings from using PCM are shown in Table 5. According to
the U.S. EIA’s information the price of electricity in Kansas is 13.32
cents per kWh (October 2017). Thus, the average daily cost savings
were 3 cents/m2.

120
K.O. Lee et al.
4. Conclusions
The thermal performance of PCM-enhanced walls was evaluated
using two test houses with typical residential frame wall construction
under full weather conditions. The PCM was incorporated in the walls
via direct mixing of the PCM with cellulose insulation. DSC tests
showed that the cellulose would not adversely affect the latent heat of
fusion of the PCM in the mixture. The experimental results showed that
on average the peak heat fluxes were time delayed by about 1.5 h. The
peak heat flux reductions were different for the four walls. These were
26.0%, 38.5%, 16.1%, and 20.8% for the north, east, south, and west
walls, respectively. The daily average peak heat flux reduction for the
individual walls was 25.4%. However, the average hourly peak heat
flux reduction from the sum of all four walls was 26.6%. This was be-
cause the peak heat fluxes for the various walls occurred at different
times during the day. Only the west-facing wall showed a significant
peak heat flux reduction.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural and Science
Foundation (China) [grant number 51308051] and the U.S. National
Science Foundation through Project [grant number 0533362]. The
authors would like to thank Fang Yuan, David Woody, and Kent Dye for
their contributions to this work and their assistance.
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