Please find below the
Finalist Evaluation
Judges'' comments
This proposal was not selected to advance to the Finalist round.
Comments from Judges:
Indeed, PCM does have significant energy savings. That said, the proposed approach ignores perhaps the most promising application of PCMs in the cooling dominated climates that account for most space cooling energy consumption. In those climates, PCMs integrated *with wall and attic insulation* that have phase transition temperatures tailored for those applications have the greatest energy savings potential (see several papers by Jan Kosny on this topic). In most strong cooling climates, integration of PCM in the interior wall board can be used to shift some of the peak cooling load to earlier times in the day, with energy savings primarily from the decreased temperature lift on the air-conditioning cycle... but the large heat fluxes tend to overwhelm this capacity reasonably quickly. Finally, this approach has been already researched in the past, and products already exist (foremost in Europe) that use this approach in climates with modest cooling loads. Cost *is* a major barrier to widespread deployment of this technology, but so is the lack of standard performance data and models that are essential for engineers to effectively incorporate PCM-enhanced building materials into building models and designs.
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Semi-Finalist Evaluation
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