Novel ventilation cooling system for reducing air conditioning use in buildings.

Night-time cooling of buildings is a recognized way of reducing the use of air conditioning, and hence energy consumption. The paper describes the construction and testing of a latent heat storage system, which uses a novel combination of night cooling, heat pipes and phase change materials (PCMs) and has the distinct advantage that it is suitable for fitting to existing buildings. The design of the heal pipe/PCM heat storage unit is briefly discussed.