Thermal insulation efficiency

It is essential to reduce the inordinate amount of energy used for climate control in buildings. To reduce heat loss in residential buildings, it is necessary to insulate building envelopes more airtight. Many air tightness and insulation methods have been proposed and successfully applied to the building envelope, including areas such as walls, windows and the others. However, if it concentrates only air tightness and insulation to save energy consumption in the buildings, that’ll make a problem to maintain indoor air quality within acceptable levels, such as sick building syndrome.

This paper describes the energy-saving effects of the proposed system with an active ventilation function and a heat pump for heat recovery. First, the temperature of the air supplied through the porous material versus the outdoor temperature was calculated using computational fluid dynamics to set the boundary conditions for the energy simulation. Then, the cooling/heating loads of a typical residential building in Japan were calculated and comparisons were made with and without the proposed system installed.

In order to insulate buildings more efficiently, many insulation methods have been proposed and successfully applied to the building envelope, including areas such as walls and windows. However, it is also important to insulate window frames efficiently because they usually contribute the greatest heat loss. The authors propose a new dynamic insulation system for window frames, with an active ventilation function and a heat pump for heat recovery.