Modelling PCM-Enhanced Building Components in Residential Buildings: A Case Study Mohd Hedayatullah Mobeen 1 , Miroslava Kavgic 1 , Ali Al-Janabi 1 1 Department of Civil Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada Abstract: In countries with extreme weather conditions such as Canada, thermal storage plays an important role in energy conservation and in providing adequate thermal comfort. Phase Change Materials (PCMs) have the potential to store and release large quantities of heat per unit of mass through a phase change process from liquid to solid and back near typical room temperatures. Successful and cost-effective application of PCMs in buildings depends on many factors including working temperature range, material thickness, location within the space, and location within the building component. This paper presents the application of PCM-enhanced building components to reduce space heating and cooling energy consumption while maintaining comfortable indoor conditions in a single-family house located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Detailed whole building energy model is developed in EnergyPlus and is validated against real measurements. Different possible error types in simulation are also discussed in this paper. Keywords: EnergyPlus, PCMs, Thermal Storage, Residential, Whole-building Energy Modeling INTRODUCTION Envelope thermal performance requirements are becoming more stringent, and the most common compliance approach is to add more insulation. In many cases, this may not be practical due to space constraints and greater use of glazing façade systems. An alternative approach is to increase building envelope’s thermal storage capacity by incorporating Phase Change Materials. PCMs can store and release large amounts of energy through the phase change process without substantial change in temperature. Depending on the PCM type, it can store about 3-4 times more heat per volume than sensible heat in solids and liquids at an approximate temperature of 20 °C as reported by Mehling & Cabeza (2008). The idea is that PCMs absorbs part of a building’s heat load during the day as they melt and releases absorbed heat during the colder night by returning to their solid state. In the summer, the released heat would be removed using natural or mechanical ventilation, while in the winter it would reduce the heating requirements (Kosny, 2015). The first documented use of a PCM was by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Dr. Maria Telkes in 1948 in a five-room 135m² house located in Dover, Massachusetts, USA. In her passive solar house, metal drums filled with Glauber’s salt (Na2SO4.IOH2O) were used as a part of a passive solar heating system (Kosny, 2015). Since then, researchers investigated the application of PCMs for different purposes and the most common include: reduction of space cooling and heating energy consumption; thermal peak load shaving and shifting; and improvement of indoor thermal comfort. The use of PCMs in buildings is becoming more appealing with the arrival of a variety of ready-made PCM-enhanced building products on the market, including insulations, gypsum boards, panel products, concrete blends, ready-made plaster blends, windows and window attachment products. Researchers in the US and Europe reported that use of PCM-enhanced foam insulation (Kosny et al, 2007 and Kosny et al, 2010) and celluloses insulation (Kosny (2008), Fang (2009), & Kosny et al (2012)) in wood-framed walls can reduce peak-hour cooling loads by 30-40 %, whereas heating loads during mixed seasons and winter can be reduced by about 16 % as reported by Kosny, J. (2008). Tardieu et al. (2011) investigated the application of PCM- enhanced gypsum boards in wood-framed structures in New Zealand. The researcher reported that the use of PCM- enhanced products can reduce the daily indoor space temperature fluctuation by up to 4 °C during summer. Muruganantham et al. (2010) tested several wooden- framed walls, floor and attic systems containing biobased PCM packaged in arrays of plastic foil containers under field conditions in Tempe, AZ, USA. The researchers reported cooling energy savings between 12 and 30 % while heating energy savings ranged from 9 to 29 %. Weinlaeder et al. (2011) monitored interior vertical slats filled with PCM for more than 2 years. Their results show that the temperature of the interior surface of the PCM- filled slats did not go beyond the PCM melting temperature of 28 °C, whereas conventional systems frequently reached 40 °C. The capabilities of saving peak hour loads and shifting peak hour time by incorporating PCMs into building components have successfully been reported by Kosny et al. (2014) and Childs and Stovall (2012). Kosny Proceedings of eSim 2018, the 10ᵗʰ conference of IBPSA-Canada Montréal, QC, Canada, May 9-10, 2018 575 ISBN 978-2-921145-88-6