THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THERMAL MASS HEAT EXCHANGERS TO CONTROL THE AIR TEMPERATURE IN THE BRICK AND WOODEN HOUSE

• Main Author: Jurizat, Aldissain
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Arsitektur
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/36967
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Architects work with materials to obtain a good design. The choice of the building materials will undoubtedly have an impact on the occupant, primarily for thermal comfort. One of the thermal comfort factors is air room temperature which is differ based on the design and environmental condition. Day and night cycles affect the value of room air temperature. In tropical climates, residents often feel thermal discomfort during the day due to high air temperatures, so that residents of the house use the air conditioner (AC) to reduce room air temperature. But the use of air conditioning harms the environment due to CO2 emissions and the use of electrical energy derived from fossil which is unsustainability. This kind of strategy is an active cooling system using a large amount of energy. Besides that, there is a passive cooling strategy as a potential system which has environmentally friendly for the HVAC system. This system works by using maximum natural resource into the building system. This study discusses the performance of the heat exchanger model using coconut oil as an internal thermal mass. This material is selected by few criteria for passive cooling building, i.e. (1) thermodynamic properties, (2) harmless for human, (3) prices and (4) availability in nature. Besides, this material works by storing heat from the building in the day and release it in the night so that the lower temperature could be reached as the function of a passive cooling technique. There are two models for heat exchanger, i.e. (1) wall-shaped and (2) box-shaped. Next, the study was conducted in an ordinary brick house and wooden house in Indonesia. Brick houses have the ability as thermal mass systems while wooden houses have the ability as thermal insulation. The result shows that wooden house has good thermal capabilities than a brick house as a passive cooling technique. Next, the result also indicates that the use of heat exchanger during the day can reduce the temperature higher in brick houses compared to wooden houses, whereas at night heat exchanger has a smaller ability to raise air temperatures in wooden houses than brick houses. The lower the temperature value of heat exchanger at night has better performance as passive cooling. Although the results show that the ability of heat exchanger in brick houses is better as passive cooling during the day, it must be noted that the time difference is short. Besides that, the wooden house has the time difference much longer than brick house although the temperature control is in the small amount reduction. Furthermore, the performance of wall-shaped heat exchanger is better than box-shaped because of the ability to release the heat during the night and absorb it during the day in a large amount of energy.