A novel numerical approach for measuring phase change temperature range of Phase Change Material in real building conditions

Phase change materials (PCMs) integrated into the building envelope offer a significant interest in regulating indoor temperatures. They allow them to approach, reach or maintain thermal comfort conditions for the occupants. The efficiency of the PCM depends on its intrinsic parameters, such as latent heat or phase change times. These parameters are usually obtained from expensive differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) or Heat Flux Meter Apparatus (HFMA) measurements. This paper proposes an innovative numerical method to provide the same information from simple measurements of temperature and heat flux at their surface. The Latent Heat Detection Method (LHDM) allows the detection of the duration of the transition zones and calculates the latent heat of the phase change. The LHDM method is applied to the annual data of a full-scale platform, and a PCM performance indicator is proposed. Comparing the DSC results allows concluding of the accuracy of the proposed method. The maximum associated relative errors remained below 6%, with an average relative error close to 2.5% for the onset temperatures and 1.61% for the endset temperatures. These results offer promising prospects for increasing the accessibility of experimental PCM research.