Solar facade for space cooling

A building integrated cooling facade is proposed in this paper. It is a fan-assisted system that consists of two vertical plenums. The first plenum was made of black aluminium transpired plate and a sandtile wall, while the second plenum is formed by the sandtile wall and the building wall. The aluminium plate served as a solar collector and the sandtile wall was an evaporative pad. The reverse side of the sandtile wall that contacted with the air in the second plenum was coated with a water-resistant layer, hence the air was cooled without adding any moisture into it. The facade cooling performance under various operating conditions is investigated through experiment and theoretical analyses. It is found that inlet water temperature is the key factor affecting the cooling performance. In terms of cooling efficiency, the energy consumption to generate 1 kW of cooling that cooling the air to 293 K is only 0.52 W, which is similar to the amount of energy required by some of the solar indirect evaporative cooling and desiccant cooling systems.

► A building integrated solar facade for space cooling was designed. ► The performance was investigated through experiment and theoretical analyses. ► It is found that inlet water temperature is the key influent factor. ► Similar cooling efficiency to solar desiccant and indirect evaporative cooling.