Numerical humidity assessment: analysis of the thermal performance of a residential building

Abstract

The earth-air heat exchanger (EAHE) is a device where the external ambient air is blown to use the ground as a heat source, through buried ducts with the aid of low power fans, thus powering the energy consumed in the building. The air at the outlet of the ducts is heated in winter and cooled in summer, providing thermal comfort conditions for indoor environments. The goal of the extensive search in recent decades has been to find solutions that can improve a building’s thermal comfort in order to provide recommendations for the design of various devices utilized in the utilization of renewable energy sources. This work aims to evaluate the results found for humidity and air temperature in a building. The objective was to create a computational model that depicts practical operating circumstances for a building’s ground-to-ground heat exchangers. These evaluations were carried out by numerical simulation with the EnergyPlus software, for which a meteorological file was created. To examine the building’s behavior in various climates, the data are shown for two typical project days: one in the summer and one in the winter.