CGBC researchers’ new article entitled “Breathing walls: The design of porous materials for heat exchange and decentralized ventilation” was accepted and will be published in a forthcoming issue of Energy and Buildings, an international academic journal that publishes articles about “explicit links to energy use in buildings” to “present new research results, and new proven practice aimed at reducing the energy needs of a building and improving indoor environment quality.” Authors Salmaan Craig and Jonathan Grinham demonstrate how to design pores in building materials so that incoming fresh air can be efficiently tempered with low-grade heat while conduction losses are kept to a minimum.
CGBC’s Materials Dimension continues to advance research that aims to make natural ventilation feasible for a wider range of building types and a wider range of building climates. The team works to achieve this by developing innovative designs for building envelopes using standard materials based on principles of heat exchanger design. This work hopes to inspire an open-source ‘commons’ of innovative heat-exchange designs for breathing buildings, which can be made from standard materials and adapted to local circumstances, including in-lab and in-situ performance data.
Read the article here.