In this study, three-dimensional numerical models of cylindrical adsorber were developed for vertical and horizontal fins. This adsorber contains fins filled with two traditional adsorbents (Zeolite and Silica gel) and a new adsorbent (NH2-MIL125). The height of the adsorber is adjusted to have the same amount of the adsorbent for the different number of fins and adsorber design. The discretization of the coupled equations in the system is done by the finite volume method (FVM). The effect of the number and geometry of fins on the desorption kinetic and the specific cooling capacity are investigated for each one. The results showed that NH2-MIL125 gives the best coefficient of performance (COP) and the highest Specific Cooling Power (SCP) comparing to the traditional adsorbents. For the vertical fins, results showed a low impact of the fins number and design of the different adsorbents (Zeolite, silica and NH2-MIL125). This low impact is due to the configuration of the adsorbent bed. The factor form F is found to be correlated to the time cycle and the heat transfer. F has an optimal value of 0.4 when the number of fins is 15. The coefficient of performance (COP) shown to be independent from the fins number. The Specific Cooling Power (SCP) is affected by the fins number of the three adsorbents. NH2-MIL125 is giving the best result of SCP reaching a value of 80 Wh/kg. Considering the obtained results, the NH2-MIL125 is a promising adsorbent for the adsorption cooling system.

Comfort of the building is one of the important factors that is hard to achieve for architects and engineers as it depends on both physic and psychological parameter. This paper discusses these two aspects on the thermal performance of residential building in context of hothumid climate. Three different types of residential buildings including townhouse, detached house and apartment building in Phnom Penh, Cambodia were chosen as the case studies. The analysis of thermal performance of each house is based on (a) the measurement of physical parameters (air temperature, relative humidity, air velocity), (b) occupants survey to compare with data from the measurement and (c) interview with the occupants to know about their satisfaction and sensation to the physical parameters. Impact of different designs of houses on thermal performance and the importance of influential physical parameters for tropical climate is analysed. Comparison of results to the Fanger’s model also indicate the importance of air velocity in thermal comfort for tropical region. The survey shows that in natural ventilation, women in their 20s to 30s feel comfortable with the temperature of 29 to 30°C and humidity of 73 to 75%.

Improving the energy performance of passive energy buildings is based on reducing their consumption. These reach very high levels in overheating periods because of the mechanical ventilation systems. This work proposes to implement ventilation strategies to reduce the in-door temperature of an academic building considered a passive solar structure and designed to benefit as much as possible from solar radiation. Using TRNSYS software, with its two components, TRNBUILD and TRNFLOW, different likely scenarios were tested and allowed to identify significant results. The mechanical extraction system is a solution if the extraction threshold temperature is 21-19°C to keep the Hall_1 temperature lower. While, to make the temperature of all areas of the building more comfortable, three natural ventilation scenarios were evaluated. Obtained results highlight that natural ventilation scenario (circuit 2) is the optimal scenario which makes the different zones very comfortable and lowers the tempera-ture by an average of 4°C compared to mechanical ventilation. Thanks to the proposed venti-lation scenarios, we have shown that we can, thanks to natural ventilation, renew the air inside the different areas of the building and maintain the comfort temperature. Natural ventilation can be an alternative to mechanical ventilation if we consider appropriate scenarios. This will strongly reduce energy consumption.

In developing countries such as Benin, the use of clay soils to produce fired clay bricks can be confronted with the problems of availability of the energy required for firing. The present study assesses the possibility to use these clay resources to produce compressed earth blocks (CEB) as alternative to fired clay. CEBs were produced by physically stabilizing a highly clayey soil with 0/5 granite dust, followed by chemical stabilization with 8wt% cement and the incorporation of 0 to 1.5wt% quackgrass straw. This resulted in dimensional stability of CEB, despite a slight swelling of 16.33 mm/m upon immersion observed only on CEB containing 1 and 1.5wt% straw. The coefficients of resistance to abrasion are well improved above the standardized minimum threshold of 2cm2/g, i.e. 29.7 to 7.72cm2/g for straw contents of 0 to 1.5%. Moreover, the maximum erosion depth of the CEB of 32.6mm/h, is well below the limit of 120mm/h, despite using a water pressure 10 times higher than the standard pressure of 50kPa. These results testify to the durability of stabilized CEB. However, the dry and wet compressive strength decreased from 5.1 to 2.84MPa and from 3 to 1.02MPa, respectively, with the straw content of 0 to 1%. This does not hinder the use of these CEB for sustainable building construction, as the values of their compressive strength in dry and wet conditions were respectively above the required values of 2MPa and 1MPa.

DEVELOPMENT OF A DISTANCE LEARNING PLATFORM BASED ON A NETWORK OF CONNECTED LABS TO STUDY THE ENERGY PERFORMANCE OF BUILDINGS SYSTEMS

Benin, like most West African countries, is confronted with the lack of indoor thermal comfort standards adapted to the realities of the region. This situation leads to the adoption of Western comfort standards, the consequences of which can be seen in the discomfort of building occupants and above all in significant energy losses. This justifies the need to identify, among the many comfort models developed in the literature, those that are better adapted to the evaluation of thermal comfort in buildings in Benin. Thus, after a literature review on the subject, two comfort models were found to be relevant for the assessment of thermal comfort in air-conditioned buildings in hot and humid regions. These are the adaptive models of López-Pérez and al. and Indraganti and al. The application of these two models on an air-conditioned office building located in the city of Cotonou in southern Benin, resulted in comfort temperatures of 26.1°Cand 26°Crespectively. These values, very close to the average neutral temperature of the occupants (26.1°C), reveal the effectiveness of these adaptive models in assessing thermal comfort in the said building. Moreover, the application of Fanger's static model (PMV) and hybrid models (aPMV and PMVnew) has shown that the PMVand aPMVof Yao and al. underestimate the adaptability of the occupants to relatively high comfort temperatures while the PMVnewof Olissan and al. overestimates this adaptability.

Overheating is a major problem that may occur, especially in high-performing buildings. The insulation thickness that is currently installed in passive houses (around 30 cm) may indeed lead to severe overheating problems if this is some mitigated by adequate solar gains control and/or efficient ventilation schemes and strategies. This risk is expressed in percentage and calculated when the indoor temperature is above 25 degrees C. For instance, the acceptable limit for a passive house is set at 5% over a year as defined by the Passive House Platform standard in Belgium(Vandenberghe & VanLoon, 2013). To assess overheating, dynamic simulation is a valuable approach that can be used to calculate the overheating risk and to assess the efficiency of overheating control measures. This paper presents an approach where a detailed simulation model of a passive house was developed (using TRNSYS Type 56), calibrated on the basis of measurements carried out in a typical house in Belgium and then used to compare different overheating mitigation strategies. The accuracy of the simulated model was assessed by calculating statistical indices. When the calibration results have shown a good match between measured and simulated data, the model was used in dynamic simulations to determine the best solution to reduce the risk of overheating in house under study.

Different heating system controllers for passive solar buildings are compared on two different buildings. The performance criterion combines energy performance and thermal comfort using the "cost function" paradigm. The experimental facilities did not allow a direct experimental comparison by using two identical buildings. The controllers were implemented alternatively in one building and a performance comparison was obtained in two ways: first by identifying short periods that have similar driving variables (weather conditions and building occupancy) and comparing the experimental results obtained in both cases. The second method mixes experiments and simulation using a well-tuned model of the building and its occupants. This paper discusses the results obtained using the above methods and shows that both methods give consistent estimates of the difference between controllers, while the second method allows to extrapolate useful information from the limited data available.

An optimal controller for auxiliary heating of passive solar buildings and commercial buildings with high internal gains is tested in simulation. Some of the most restrictive simplifications that were used in previous studies of that controller (Kummert et al., 2001) are lifted: the controller is applied to a multizone building, and a detailed model is used for the HVAC system. The model-based control algorithm is not modified. It is based on a simplified internal model. It is shown that the optimal controller's performance varies strongly with the zone that is considered and the reference zone that is used. However, it is never worse than the performance of a reference controller. The global performance at the building level depends on the selected reference zone and on the building sensitivity to overheating.

A prototype of sorption-based solar heat storage is tested. It integrates a vibrating circular reactor designed for batch operation with around 2 kg of composite (Silica Gel with 40 % of CaCl2). The global performance of the system and of each component is evaluated during adsorption and desorption. The influence of different parameters of the system is measured through a parametric variation: temperatures, flow rates, adsorbent mass and granulometry, air humidity and reactor insulation. The prototype is connected to the experimental building allowing to make semi-virtual experimentations in controlled conditions. In conditions considered as realistic, the reactor average heat flow is around 600 W of which 250 W are transferred to the heating loop. The efficiency of a cycle desorption/ adsorption is around 13% for a water uptake between 12 and 40%. Parameters identified as crucial are the adsorbent granulometry, the low temperature heat source temperature and location, the load return temperature and the hot source temperature and flow rate.

This study presents an original methodology for calibrating building energy models based on monitored data. An optimization-based approach was applied to a monitored test building coupling the building simulation program EnergyPlus with the optimization software GenOpt. An objective function was set to minimize the difference between the simulated and the monitored energy consumption at the hour time scale, varying the building model parameters selected at the beginning as the most influencing. After calibration, the observed heating energy consumption of the case study matched closely the monitored data, the model accuracy was verified according to the MBE and the Cv(RMSE) limit set by the ASHRAE guideline 14.

Building energy performance characterization at design stage is theoretical and could be subject to errors. In operation, it is difficult to verify the reliability of these calculated parameters. The aim of this paper is to set in, a method of verification based upon full-scale dynamic measurements. It presents a complete experimentation of identification/validation of energy performance parameters, upon the “Jacques Geelen” climate chamber of Arlon campus in Belgium. The experiment uses a co-heating method for identification under stationary regime and grey box model under the dynamic regime. Additionally, a Kalman filter is used to estimate the different disturbances of internal gains in the grey box model. A reliable mathematical model is finally provided for identification of building energy performance parameters. INTRODUCTION Estimation of the buildings energy performance is part of the design phase by calculating the theoretical energy use. Actual performance after realisation may deviate significantly from this theoretically designbased performance. Building performance characterization based on full-scale dynamic measurements could help to bridge the gap between theoretically predicted and real life performance of buildings (Roels, 2011). The purpose of the following experimentation is to build a robust mathematical model for the identification of building energy performance parameters. The structure of the paper follows up the approach leading to this goal. It presents in thefirst section the “Jacques Geelen” climate chamber and the theoretical calculation, as per the design data, of the U value (heat transfer coefficient) characterizing its energy performance. Second section concerns the verification of the calculated energy performance under stationary regime by means of co-heating method. Third section is about the verification under dynamic regime by means of mathematical identification. In a first step, verification considers a dynamic regime without disturbance. In the second step, it considers through a Kalman filter, the disturbances of internal gains. The results of each step of identification are compared to co-heating results in order to validate (or not) the obtained mathematical models. Figure 1 describes in “blue” the methodology of verification and in “red” the construction of the mathematical models, which will give finally, an algorithm of verification usable in other similar case of verification/validation. Figure 1 Methodology of identification of energy parameters of the climate chamber “JACQUES GEELEN” CLIMATE CHAMBER PRESENTATION Presentation Jacques Geelen” climate chamber is a testing platform for building energy systems combining building demand, heating and cooling emitters, water-based and air-based distribution systems, storage systems and heat and cool production systems. It was built between 2000 and 2002 and includes a climate chamber in which a well defined climate can be controlled in terms of temperature and humidity. (André, 2003). Proceedings of BS2015: 14th Conference of International Building Performance Simulation Association, Hyderabad, India, Dec. 7-9, 2015.