Int. J. Renewable Energy Technology, Vol. 8, Nos. 3/4, 2017 371 Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Numerical investigation on cooling behaviour of buildings using phase change material Ashish Kumar and Sudip Simlandi* Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata – 700 032, India Email: ashishkumar14m@gmail.com Email: sudip.simlandi@gmail.com *Corresponding author Nilkanta Barman Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ghani Khan Choudhury Institute of Engineering and Technology, Malda – 732 144, India Email: nilkantajdvu@yahoo.com Abstract: This work considers cooling of buildings using a suitable PCM on its rooftop in a hot climate country. The PCM absorbs solar radiation by melting in day time and releases absorbed heat by solidification at night to the ambient. Both melting and solidification involve complex transport phenomena those are governed by mass, momentum and energy conservations. For simulation, the set of governing equations is discretised based on control volume method using power law scheme. Finally, the SIMPLER and TDMA algorithms are used to solve the discretised linear algebraic equations. The two-phase interface during melting and solidification is traced using enthalpy update scheme. Prediction involves melting, solidification behaviours of PCM, and variation of room temperature throughout the day. As observed, the recycling of PCM is possible for the next successive days if thermal conductivity enhancer (TCE) is added in PCM. Accordingly, a TCE is considered for recycling of the PCM. Keywords: cooling behaviour of building; modelling; phase change material; PCM; recycling; thermal conductivity enhancer; TCE. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kumar, A., Simlandi, S. and Barman, N. (2017) ‘Numerical investigation on cooling behaviour of buildings using phase change material’, Int. J. Renewable Energy Technology, Vol. 8, Nos. 3/4, pp.371–386. Biographical notes: Ashish Kumar is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Netaji Subhash Engineering College, Kolkata, India. Presently, he is pursuing his PhD in phase change materials as energy storage device. He has research interest in heat transfer, fluid mechanics, green energy buildings, computational fluid dynamics, etc. Sudip Simlandi is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He has research interest in renewable energy sources, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, modelling of semisolid forming processes, computational fluid dynamics, etc.