Abstract

Building stock is relatively old in most European countries: nearly 70% of the buildings were constructed before 1980. Besides, they have poor thermal performance. The situation in Ukraine as well as the rest of Eastern Europe is even more dramatic, and the performance is improving very slowly.

For example, the total energy consumption in building sector amounts to more than 40% of Ukraine’s energy use, while up to 75% of heating energy is consumed by residential and commercial buildings. In Ukraine, old non-renovated buildings lose major part of space-heating energy. Such buildings consume up to 4 times more energy than new ones, which requires implementing energy efficiency measures in the building sector not only in Ukraine, but also in other countries.

In order to provide energy efficiency increasing of old buildings, insulation renovation and retrofitting of building facades are among the priorities to implement. However, the calculations show that in many cases payback periods of such measure are long enough. In this case, it is reasonable to apply a wider range of options, considering a building as a complex system of livelihood.

Additional use of solar energy could be promising. Solar energy systems applications for the buildings facades, including historical ones, have good future prospects. Variety of solar collectors designs (air, water) have some shortcomings for application to building constructions. New designs of wall solar collectors could be a good solution for building facade and roof integration. Such types of solar collectors can improve thermal performance of building external walls.

The main aim of this session is to provide the opportunity for students to acquire knowledge and skills in the direction of solar energy technologies, their application to industrial and domestic buildings, in addition to renovation of old buildings.

One of the promising designs of solar collectors is wall air solar collector. We suggest that the students take part in the project aiming at studying the development and manufacturing a mock-up of such solar collector including the following stages: from calculations of their performances to testing.

Project prerequisites : basic knowledge in applied mathematics, physics, thermal engineering and how to use CAD-soft.

About lecturer:

Mr. Andrii Zakovorotnyi,
Engineer, Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, NAS of Ukraine