TECHNICAL AND ECONOMICAL EFFICIENCY OF THERMAL MASS IN

TEMPERATE CLIMATE. THE CASE OF CENTRAL WESTERN OF

ARGENTINA.
Alfredo Esteves1, Daniel Gelardi1, Carolina Ganem2, M.Victoria Mercado2
Direccin de Investigaciones Cientficas y Tecnolgicas (DICYT) 1
Facultad de Arquitectura2
Universidad de Mendoza
Boulogne Sur Mer 683 - 5500 Mendoza Argentina
Tel./Fax: +54 261 4392939 / E-mail: alfredo.esteves@um.edu.ar
Abstract
The role of mass in the storage of energy in buildings has long been a subject of
interest in bioclimatic and sustainable buildings. The thermal inertia of building mass is
used to produce heat up relatively slowly. For its there are often energy available from
solar and internal gains during the daytime that is greater than the daytime heating
requirements. This energy may be stored in the buidling structure and furnishings, and
released at night to offset the buiding heat loss. In a similar manner, building mass may
allow the structure to remain cool during daytime in summer and reduce air condictioning
requirements. In this paper it is showed economical and technical efficiency of thermal
mass and it conclude that, technical efficiency depend on thermal characteristic of building,
but it is possible to obtain between 69.3% and 95.8% of savings if building have thermal
mass surface between envelope surface and envelope and internal partitions surface.
Introduction
Designing with the local climate is both economical and ecological. It will result in
a lowering of costs because of decreasing energy consumption in the operation of the
building. Con edificios livianos hay mas ventajas econmicas , al tratarse de sistemas mas
rpidos y econmicos. It should be reduce the overall energy consumption by the use of
energy conservation and passive devices. In addition the climatically responsive building
can enhance its users "sense of well being" while enabling them to be aware of and to
experience the external climate.
Between 23 and 35 south latittude there are some parts of earth where prevail
desert, temperates and hot climates with some common elements: low precipitations, high
thermal diurnal amplitude, high solar radiation all over the year.
In summer, the coupling of spaces and building elements to ambient heat sinks (air,
sky, earth, water) by means of natural modes of heat transfer leads to an appreciable
cooling effect indoors (Goulding et al, 1994).
Energy storage in heating season are achieved by storing the surplus energy and by
using it at a later time, when there is a need for it. The thermal inertia of building mass is
used to produce heat up relatively slowly.
For its there are often energy available from solar and internal gains during the
daytime that is greater than the daytime heating requirements. This energy may be stored in
the buidling structure and furnishings, and released at night to offset the buiding heat loss.
In a similar manner, building mass may allow the structure to remain cool during daytime
in summer and reduce air condictioning requirements.

This types of buildings have solar passive strategies for heating in winter and
passive cooling strategies for summer. In direct gain applications, the most important factor
is provision of sufficient heat storage within the enclosing walls of the direct gain space
(Balcomb, et al, 86).
Alocation of thermal storage
For passive heating of building there are three types of thermal storage areas:
(Goulding 1994): 1- Primary thermal storage is that area located in a place that receives
solar radiation directly, the beam radiation from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M. solar time in winter.2Secondary thermal storage is thermal area that is outside the sunlit area but thermal
radiative coupling with it. 3- Remote thermal storage is not in radiative contact with
primary and secondary thermal storage. Heat transfer to remote storage is only by
convection.
Once the solar radiation enters the window some of it is absorbed on various
surfaces within the space, and the other energy is redistributed throughout the space both
by infrared radiation and by air convection. This redistribution of energy is so effective that
all surfaces enclosing a direct gain space are nearly equally effective for heat storage.
Primary and secondary thermal storage is named "direct thermal surface". Remote thermal
storage is named as "indirect thermal surface". ( Balcomb, 1984)
It is very important in solar building to put thermal mass as direct thermal surface. In
summer, heat transfer to and from thermal mass is by corrective compling only therefore
direct and indirect thermal surface does work by heat convection and radiation transfer.
Another issue to be considered in the walls' behaviour is that of the variation of the internal
temperature caused by energy accumulated during the daytime, which is radiated to the
outside at night.
If the project has the thermal mass in the interior of building, it have more thermal
inertia that transfer heat by convection and radiation to interior building in the night of
winter. In summer, mass transfer heat accumulated during the day to interior air and from it
to outside trought convective night cooling. It is very important to use a building
technology in witch the thermal isolation must be placed in the exterior (Itzard et al, 1998).
It thermal isolation is placed in the interior of wall, there is not possible to use mass
of wall as thermal mass and the building there is not have thermal inertia.
Material and thickness
Heat is generally accumulated in the materials with considerable thermal capacity.
The means of accumulation require high thermal conductivity, in order to allow a quick
transfer of heat from inside to outside the material. High density is a good indicator of a
material's high conductivity.
In an actual building, a wall will reach a particular temperature that will generally
be near a given mean value. Assuming this mean value as neutral from the standpoint of
energy consumption, when the temperature is higher, there is excess energy. When the
temperature is lower, energy is lacking. This cycle is conditioned by the wall's "U value."
Further, thermal capacity and diffusivity cause a time lag between uptake of and demand
for power.
The specific heat storage capacity of a material is the necessary heat to be added to a
unit of material mass to raise its temperature by 1K. The heat storage capacity of ordinary
building materials and water (between freezing point and boiling point) is practically

independent of temperature. Phase change materials (PCM) absorb heat when melting and
release heat when re-solidifying. But the interest of this paper is thermal materials that
storage sensible heat.
Thermal storage capacity, if of ordinary building materials is mainly dependent on
the density of the material (Table 1). The thickness of walls and floor are sick the mass
available for storage is generally less than the total mass. The effective thickness of
ordinary building materials are from 80 mm to 160 mm in period of charge and discharge
of 24 hours when the heat is supplying on only one side (goulding, et al, 1994). Roaf, 2003
indicates that (effective) thickness may be reduced to 100 mm without incurring significant
performance penalties.
Water has a very large storage capacity per unit of volume and may be used in thick
storage layers, as a result of circulating flows, a practically isothermal storage exists.
Phase Change Materials (PCM) have advantages with respect to other materials
specially if the storage temperature is above melting point. Benard et al, 1995 have shown
that the advantage of the paraffin walls over the concrete wall is that for a total weight
(inclouding containers) of about one-twelfth of the concrete wall weight, they allow for an
average useful efficiency, average comfort conditions and an average daily storafe similar
to those of the concrete wall. This is an enormous advantage for reciclyng buildings.
Tabla 1: Thermal properties of materials used in walls (Gelardi et al, 2000)

Thickness

Density

Thermal
Conductivity

Specific heat

Heat
CapacityStorage

[mm]

[Kg/m3]

[W/mK]

[J/KgK]

[KJ/m3K]

Concrete

120

2400

2,1

864

248

Brick

120

1800

0,6

1000

216

Water

120

1000

0,58

4186

502

Adobe

120

1700

0,52

1000

204

Materiales

There are several guidelines for the level of thermal mass to incorporate in buildings
(Balcomb et al, 1984, Goulding et al, 1994). These levels are chosen to prevent excessive
temperature swings in the occupied space. There are not, however, established studies that
definitively establish the effect of mass on building energy comsumption and the economy
of resources is one of the principles of sustainability in buildings (Kim et al, 1998).
There are two limits on building energy consumption which are derived analytically
(Mitchell et al., 1989). Thermal mass depends of: thermal characteristic of envelope
(overall conductance-area product of building), climatic conditions (ambient temperature
and solar radiation) and internal gains. It is necessary to take its into account to calculate
internal thermal mass.
For zero storage capacity, the heating requeirements are maximum. Thermal storage
allows excess daytime energy gains to be utilized that night and reduces purchased heating
requirements. There are a quantity of storage in function of solar savings fraction of the

Figure 3: building house as study case

building (Balcomb, 1986). But in summer, thermal storage transfer energy only by
convection and thermal admittance of the walls are useful to know the storage capacity of
wall in convective transfer (Balcomb, 1981).
We are calculated the cooling requirements of a building (in the diurnal time)
(Quadri, 1993) in the next study case. If the building does not have thermal storage it is
necessary an cooling equipment to refresh interior building. The energy consumed by
cooling equipment is the maximum energy comsumed by the building and the cost of
cooling is the highest. If the building have sufficient thermal storage, will accumulate all of
diurnal heat gain and maintain interior temperature below comfort level and the cost of
cooling is the lowest.
Case Study in Mendoza, Argentina
This concepts are studied for a building with an principal orientation to the equator
(12 m lenght). East orientation is 8 m lenght. The walls are built with interior massonry and
exterior thermal isolation of expanded polistyrene (U=0.68 W/m.C). The roof are thermal
isolated too (U=0.64 W/m.C). Windows are protected with overhang and have double
glass (U=3.1 W/m.C).
In this conditions, differents collected area of Direct Gain as Passive solar systems
of heating take into account without and with differents quantities of thermal mass in order
to know technical and economic efficiency.
Table 2: show economic efficiency of different grade of thermal mass
LCR

TS/CA

% SAVING

TS/CA

% SAVING

TS/CA

% SAVING

U$

EURO

100

30

215,9

75,3

57,3

47

36

31

97,3

226,6

89,9

60,2

22

10

85

30

100

260

88

66

11

69,3

95,8

8,3

86

100

290,3 102,1
319

112,9

References of Table 2: LCR (Load to Collector Ratio), TS/CA (Thermal Storage/Collector

Area), $ (Argentine peso).

77,1
84,9

Table 2 indicates different levels of Load Collector Ratio, three levels of interior
thermal mass 3 or 5, 9 or 10 and 30 or 31 TS, Thermal Mass (m) / CA, Collector Area
(m). The results are % saving in cooling requeriments in each case and the cost of 0%
savings in argentine peso, US dollars and Euros. It indicate that:
1- Minimum LCR (8.3) corresponding to the case of 100% equator facade as Direct Gain.
2- For LCR minimum saving is maximum and viceversa. In this case, with TS/CA = 5, the
savings id 86%.
3- TS/CA = 5 is equivalent to envelope surface of building of this case.
4- For LCR=22, correponding CA=0.1 FA (Floor area) = 34% of equator facade. In this
case with TS/CA = 5, savings are 0%, posibly is very small the surface of collector area.
With TS/CA = 9, savings are 85%.
5- For larger LCR, TS does not have incidence in savings of energy.
6- The result indicates that LCR=11 with CA = 0.2 FA =66.7% of equator facade is
recomended. The level of thermal mass must be TS/CA = 5 to obtain 69.3% of savings and
TS/CA = 9 to obtain 95.8% of annual savings in cooling.
It is important to indicate that TS/Ca = 5, when FAEP = 2 (Esteves et al, 1997) the
thermal mass surface is equivalent to envelope surface of building, and when TS/Ca = 9
this is equivalent to envelope surface and interior partitions surface added.
It is demonstrate that thermal mass is very important in desert and semidesert
climates and represent a very high level of savings depending on the conservation level and
collector area (LCR) of the building.
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