CFD investigation of a natural ventilation wind tower system with solid tube banks heat recovery for mild-cold climate

Liu, Miaomiao; Jimenez-Bescos, Carlos; Calautit, John

Abstract

Passive strategies are increasingly being employed in buildings to minimize their total energy consumption and emissions. Wind tower, a natural ventilation device, can capture the wind flow from higher locations and supply the air into the buildings' indoor space without consuming electric power. However, its use in mild-cold climate is limited due to excessive heat loss and thermal discomfort, in particular, during winter. Limited research has been conducted to explore the pre-heating of the supply air in the wind tower to address the issue and potentially increase its adoption in mild-cold climates. Therefore, a novel wind tower ventilation system integrated with solid tube banks heat recovery (HR) is proposed in this research. By combining with a passive heat recovery device, a wind tower can be operated under winter conditions to improve indoor ventilation while reducing the building heating energy consumption. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed to investigate the effects of the longitudinal pitch (SL) and the transverse pitch (ST) of the HR device on the ventilation and thermal performance. The overall performance of the wind tower was evaluated under different outdoor wind speeds. The results show that the heat recovery can be improved by reducing SL and ST, raising the supply fresh air temperature by up to 6.4 °C. Furthermore, the proposed wind tower can provide sufficient ventilation for a typical classroom occupied by 15 people when the external wind speed exceeds 3 m/s.

Citation

Liu, M., Jimenez-Bescos, C., & Calautit, J. (2022). CFD investigation of a natural ventilation wind tower system with solid tube banks heat recovery for mild-cold climate. Journal of Building Engineering, 45, Article 103570. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2021.103570

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 1, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Nov 6, 2021
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2022
• Deposit Date: Dec 16, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 7, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Building Engineering
• Electronic ISSN: 2352-7102
• Publisher: Elsevier BV
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 45
• Article Number: 103570
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2021.103570
• Keywords: Mechanics of Materials; Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality; Building and Construction; Architecture; Civil and Structural Engineering
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/7020057
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352710221014285
• Additional Information: This article is maintained by: Elsevier; Article Title: CFD investigation of a natural ventilation wind tower system with solid tube banks heat recovery for mild-cold climate; Journal Title: Journal of Building Engineering; CrossRef DOI link to publisher maintained version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobe.2021.103570; Content Type: article; Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.