The 3 E’s by paulc

Hi Paulc, As far I have read about PCM it has a great potential, and using it on rehabilitation is a good idea. I would suggest you to keep in mind the following in order to reduce globally the greenhouse emisions: PCM uses to be made of paraffin what has a huge embodied energy. This energy used to produce the PCM wallboard not always compensate the final energy saves in the building operation. In order to study this problem I would suggest you a Life Cycle approach. An option could be to research on other materials not as CO2 intensive as paraffine.

This proposal was not selected to advance to the Finalist round. Comments from Judges: Indeed, PCM does have significant energy savings. That said, the proposed approach ignores perhaps the most promising application of PCMs in the cooling dominated climates that account for most space cooling energy consumption. In those climates, PCMs integrated *with wall and attic insulation* that have phase transition temperatures tailored for those applications have the greatest energy savings potential (see several papers by Jan Kosny on this topic). In most strong cooling climates, integration of PCM in the interior wall board can be used to shift some of the peak cooling load to earlier times in the day, with energy savings primarily from the decreased temperature lift on the air-conditioning cycle... but the large heat fluxes tend to overwhelm this capacity reasonably quickly. Finally, this approach has been already researched in the past, and products already exist (foremost in Europe) that use this approach in climates with modest cooling loads. Cost *is* a major barrier to widespread deployment of this technology, but so is the lack of standard performance data and models that are essential for engineers to effectively incorporate PCM-enhanced building materials into building models and designs. Thank you for your submission!