THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF NANOMATERIALS OF A MEDIUM SIZE OFFICE BUILDING ENVELOPE WITH A SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HOT ARID CLIMATIC ZONE OF EGYPT

Abstract

According to the growing world energy consumption, there is a negative impact on the environment thus, this chapter presented a simulation study for an office building to test its thermal performance. It was based on integration of Nano materials with building envelope. The energy performance of the Moez tower office building in the hot and arid climate of Egypt, Cairo has been studied by replacing traditional materials (plaster of walls, thermal insulation (foam-polyurethane‬‏) of roof and double-glazing curtain wall) with (Nano aerogel-based rendering, Nano VIP and Nano gel glazing system) respectively. The building model was built in Revit and energy simulation was done by Design Builder program. The tower consumed about 247.7 Kwh/m2 per year, the deviation between the utility bills and simulation in energy consumption is 5 %, the base case in simulation consumed about 235.94 Kwh/m2, and this is very close to the actual consumption. The simulation results generated by Design Builder show that the Nano aerogel-based rendering can save about 0.82% of the annual energy consumption of the building, while the effect of Nano VIP in the roof can save about 1.64% of the annual energy consumption. This is not much attractive as the effect of Nano gel glazing that can save up to 10.7% in the annual energy consumption, in other cases that are integrated between the (Nano aerogel rendering and VIP), (Nano aerogel rendering and Nanogel glazing) and (Nano VIP and nanogel glazing) can save about 2.22%, 11.5% and 12.6% respectively. The Nano model saved about 13.44 % of annual energy consumption of the building compared with the base case model by using Nano aerogel-based rendering, Nano VIP and Nano gel glazing together. This result matches with those reported in the literature review for similar climate and building types. This comparative analysis revealed that the choice of using Nano materials can reduce the energy consumption of the building and the cooling energy demand.