Energy and Buildings 37 (2005) 215220 www.elsevier.

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Experimental study of under-oor electric heating system with shape-stabilized PCM plates
Kunping Lina, Yinping Zhanga,*, Xu Xua, Hongfa Dia, Rui Yangb, Penghua Qina
b

Department of Building Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China

Received 17 January 2004; received in revised form 5 June 2004; accepted 8 June 2004

Abstract This paper put forward a new kind of under-oor electric heating system with shape-stabilized phase change material (PCM) plates. Different from conventional PCM, shape-stabilized PCM can keep the shape unchanged during phase change process. Therefore, the PCM leakage danger can be avoided. This system can charge heat by using cheap nighttime electricity and discharge the heat stored at daytime. In the present work, the thermal physical properties of shape-stabilized PCM developed by us were measured. A prototype room with this system was set up in Beijing to testify its thermal performance and feasibility of this heating mode. The results show that temperature of the PCM plates upper surface can be kept near the phase transition temperature in whole day and a lot of off-peak period electricity can be used for space heating in stead of using peak period electricity, which obviously lowers the electricity tariff. # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Thermal energy heat storage; Shape-stabilized PCM; Under-oor electric heating

1. Introduction In almost all cities of north China, coal is the main energy source for residential space heating, which causes serious pollution. Beijing will host the Olympic Games in 2008, and is inclined to take other clean energy, such as electricity instead of coal for space heating. However, electrical consumption varies greatly during day and night, which conicts relatively steady output of power plant. In order to narrow the gap between the peak and valley loads of electricity demands, night and day tariff policy is being used in many cities of China. The electricity tariff at night is 1/31/5 of that at daytime. Then the shift of electrical consumption from peak periods to valley periods will provide signicant economic benet. Moreover, it is of importance for power plants in leveling the electrical load. As reported in recent studies, oor radiant heating can be an economically efcient alternative to other more common
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 6277 2518; fax: +86 10 6277 3461. E-mail address: zhangyp@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn (Y. Zhang). 0378-7788/$ see front matter # 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2004.06.017

forms of heating [1]. Radiant heating has a number of advantages over convective air heating systems. It saves living and working space since it is integrated into the building envelop [2]. Comfort heating depends on the mean effective temperature, which is a function of the ambient air and the radiant surface temperatures. Therefore, it is possible to achieve comfortable conditions with a cooler air temperature by a large oor-heating surface, which is resulting in reduced inltration heat losses [1]. Differences between head and foot temperatures are small. Because the air temperature is not greater than that of the walls, no condensation takes places on the walls and there is no need to humidify the air in the winter. Differences in air temperatures are minimal and air convection appears to be negligible and, therefore, movement of dust is diminished. So, oor radiant systems are cleaner than more conventional ones [3]. Thermal mass integrated into a oor heating system can be used for off-peak storage of thermal energy. Thus, peak loads may be reduced and shifted to nighttime when electricity costs are lower [4]. The combination of radiant

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Nomenclature ACH cp Hm k r air change per hour (h1) specic heat (kJ kg1 8C1) heat of fusion (kJ kg1) thermal conductivity (W m1 8C1) density (kg m3)

oor heating and thermal storage offers the possibility of signicantly improving building energy efciency without compromising thermal comfort. Dense materials, such as concrete are often applied to storing thermal energy for electric oor heating system. Athienitis et al. described an under-oor electric heating system with integrated thermal storage, with 1 cm-thick sand, and 4 cm-thick concrete blocks as the main thermal storage mass [1]. Bakos introduced a specic application using a combined sunspace-Trombe Wall passive solar system and an electrically heated thermal storage oor to satisfy the heating requirements of a house [5]. From point of view of application, these dense materials may cause larger uctuation of indoor temperature than phase change material (PCM). Phase change materials can provide large latent heat storage over the narrow range of temperature typically encountered in buildings, thus they can improve the thermal comfort degree. Farid and Kong addressed a kind of under-oor heating system with encapsulated CaCl26H2O placed in the concrete oor during construction, and good performance was achieved [6]. However the ordinary solidliquid PCM used in the wall or oor must be encapsulated, hence the leakage, the additive thermal resistance and additive cost are often great problems in application of the PCM. Haws et al. introduced the idea of increasing the thermal mass of concrete by mixing some PCM with the concrete to avoid encapsulation [7,8]. Anthienitis et al. used gypsum wallboard impregnated by 25 wt.% butyl stearate in a passive solar building to reduce the maximum room tempera-

ture during the daytime and to reduce the heating load at night [9]. But the heat of fusion is not high because of the small proportion of PCMs in the compound materials. Shape-stabilized PCM is a kind of compound material of PCM and supporting material, and the proportion of PCM is 7085 wt.% in this compound. As long as the operating temperature is below the melting point of the supporting material, the compound material can keep its shape even when the PCM changes from solid to liquid. Therefore, this type of PCM is an appropriate material for thermal storage in buildings without encapsulation. Some researchers studied the preparing method of this material for its cheap price and attractive thermal properties in recent years [10,11]. The purpose of the present paper is: 1. to introduce an under-oor electric heating system with shape-stabilized PCM plates developed by us; 2. to experimentally investigate its thermal performance and applied feasibility; and 3. to provide experimental data for modeling and simulating such system. 1.1. Thermal performance of shape-stabilized PCM A kind of shape-stabilized PCM plates was developed by us, which consists of 75 wt.% parafn as a dispersed PCM and 25 wt.% polyethylene as a supporting material. The parafns phase transition temperature is 52 8C and its heat of fusion is about 200 kJ/kg. Fig. 1 shows the appearance and microstructure of a shape-stabilized PCM plate. Differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) was used for measuring the phase transition temperature, tm, and heat of fusion, Hm. The two peaks of the DSC curves in Fig. 2 represent the phase transition temperatures of parafn and polyethylene in the shape-stabilized PCM, respectively. Its thermal physical properties were measured and presented in Table 1.

Fig. 1. Photos of shape-stabilized PCM plate made by us.

K. Lin et al. / Energy and Buildings 37 (2005) 215220 Table 1 Thermophysical properties of the shape-stabilized PCM r (kg m3) 850 Cp (kJ kg1 8C1) 2.0 Hm (kJ kg1) 150 k (W m1 8C 0.15
1

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Fig. 4. Schematic of electric oor heating system with shape-stabilized PCM plates.

a 1.6 m 1.5 m double-glazed window facing south, covered by black curtain. The roof and walls were made of 100 mm-thick polystyrene wrapped by metal board. The under-oor heating system included 120 mm-thick polystyrene insulation, electric heaters, 15 mm-thick PCM, some wooden supporters, 10 mm-thick air layer and 8 mm-thick wood oor. Fig. 4 illustrates the structure of the heating system. Fig. 5 shows photos of the heaters, PCM plates and wood oor used in the electric heating system.
Fig. 2. DSC curves for the shape-stabilized PCM.

2.2. Instrumentation The experiments aimed at determining the thermal behavior of the heating system and indoor temperature of the room. The following apparatus were applied for measuring. 1. Dataloggers (for recording data). 2. Computer (for processing the data). 3. Copperconstantan thermal couples (for measuring temperature). 4. Temperature controller (for controlling onoff of the electric heater). 5. Thermal radiometer (for measuring solar radiation). 6. Ammeter (for noting electric consumption). Fig. 6 depicts the temperature distribution. Two of them were placed at different height (0.5 and 1.5 m) in the house. Air change per hour (ACH) was gained by the tracer-gas technique with methane [12]. The measured solar radiation was recorded hour by hour by using a thermal radiometer. 2.3. Experimental studies The experiments were carried out in Tsinghua University, April 2003. The inner heat source was about 150 W when all the apparatus were working. The apparatus worked for 6 days with night electric heating, and then for 4 days without electric heating. During the heating days, the heaters stopped working when their temperature more than 708 C and operated again when it below 558 C in the heating period, which was from 23:00 to 8:00. Figs. 7 and 8 show the measured air temperatures with and without night electric heating. Fig. 9 shows the variation of the temperatures of the oor surface and the shape-stabilized PCM plates with night electric heating.

2. Experimental investigation of a prototype system In order to investigate the thermal performance of the under-oor electric heating system with the shape-stabilized PCM plates, an experimental house with this system was set up in Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. 2.1. Description of the prototype house and the heating system The experimental house shown in Fig. 3 was equipped with the under-oor electric heating system including shapestabilized PCM plates. The dimensions of the experimental house were 3 m (depth) 2 m (width) 2 m (height). It had

Fig. 3. Appearance of the experimental house.

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Fig. 5. Photos of the systems structure.

3. Results and discussions The heating time in Beijing is from 15 November to 15 March. The average temperature during these days is about 1.3 8C. However, the experiments were carried out in April, and the average temperature during the experimental days was 13.68 C. Therefore, the measured indoor temperatures were high because of the high outdoor temperature in

April, and the swing of indoor temperatures was large resulting from the small thermal capacitance of the house. Fig. 7 shows that the average indoor temperature was 20 8C and the temperature difference between day and night was 12 8C without electric heating. Fig. 8 shows that average indoor temperature was 31 8C and the temperature difference between day and night was still kept around 12 8C with night electric heating. Hence, the system increased the

Fig. 6. Experimental apparatus and temperature distribution.

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Fig. 10. Heat consumption and heat loss of the experimental house. Fig. 7. Measured air temperatures without electric heating.

indoor temperature while did not increase the temperature swing. The temperature of the PCM plates upper surface was kept above 45 oC for more than 10 h after heaters stopped working at 8:00 (see Fig. 9). The temperature difference between the two indoor measuring points (0.5 and 1.5 m high) was less than 0.5 8C, which demonstrated high thermal comfort degree. Fig. 10 shows the total heat consumption of the house and the heat loss through the insulation layer under the heaters. No more than 15% heat energy was lost through the insulation. For the test room, 3.3 kWh electric heat energy was shifted from the peak period to the off-peak period every day, which was 54% of the total heat consumption.

4. Conclusions
Fig. 8. Measured air temperatures with night electric heating.

A new structure of under-oor electric heating system with shape-stabilized PCM plates was put forward in this paper. An outdoor experimental house was set up in Beijing in April 2003. The experimental results testied the feasibility and good performance of the heating system. And they provided data and basis for modeling and simulating such system. The following conclusions can be made: 1. The system increased the indoor temperature without increasing the temperature difference. 2. The temperature of the PCM plates was kept at the phase transition temperature for a long period after heaters stopped working. More than half of the total electric heat energy was shifted from the peak period to the offpeak period, which would provide signicant economic benet by different electricity tariff between day and night. 3. Small indoor temperature difference along vertical direction appeared because the under-oor heating could warm the indoor air uniformly. The heating system was comfortable and energy-efcient.

Fig. 9. Measured temperatures of the oor and PCM with night electric heating.

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K. Lin et al. / Energy and Buildings 37 (2005) 215220 [5] G. Bakos, Energy management method for auxiliary energy saving in a passive-solar-heated residence using low-cost off-peak electricity, Energy and Buildings 31 (3) (2000) 237241. [6] M. Farid, W.J. Kong, Proceeding of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Underoor heating with latent heat storage, 2001, pp. 601 609. [7] D.W. Hawes, D. Feldman, Absorption of phase change materials in concrete, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 27 (2) (1992) 91 101. [8] D.W. Hawes, D. Banu, D. Feldman, Stability of phase change materials in concrete, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 27 (2) (1992) 103118. [9] A.K. Anthienitis, et al., Investigation of the thermal performance of a passive solar test-room with wall latent heat storage, Building and Environment 32 (5) (1997) 405410. [10] H. Ye, X. Ge, Preparation of polyethylene-parafn compound as a form-stable solidliquid phase change material, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells 64 (1) (2000) 3744. [11] M. Xiao, B. Feng, K. Gong, Preparation and performance of shape stabilized phase change thermal storage materials with high thermal conductivity, Energy Conversion and Management 43 (1) (2002) 103 108. [12] M.H. Sherman, Tracer-gas techniques for measuring ventilation in a single zone, Building and Environment 25 (4) (1990) 365374.

Acknowledgments This work was supported by the National Key Basic Research Special Funds Project of China, No. 2001CB409600 by the Hi-tech Research and Development Program of China, No. 2002AA513050, and by the Fundamental of Tsinghua University, No. JC2002001.

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