LAUSR

The indoor thermal environment under an intermittent heating condition can be maintained by rationally utilizing the heat storage and release processes of the composite phase-change wall (composite-PCW), leading to heating time and energy consumption reductions. In order to optimize its heat storage and release processes, the influences of different parameters on the dynamic thermal processes of composite-PCW were studied, including the position and thickness of phase-change material (PCM), phase transition temperature, phase-change latent heat, and PCM thermal conductivity, according to two typical intermittent conditions summarized by experimental data. With large heat storage efficiency η and small heat loss rate ε, the optimized composite-PCW that was adaptive for intermittent heating was the composite-PCW with 10 mm PCM integrated to the wall inside. Its phase-transition temperature was 19–20 °C (66.2–68 °F), the phase-change latent heat was 220 kJ/kg (95.58 btu/lb), and the thermal conductivity was 0.4 W/(m·K) (0.23 btu/(ft·h·°F)) at liquid states and 0.8 W/(m·K) (0.46 btu/(ft·h·°F)) at solid states.