Novel Technologies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Energy, Physics, Environment, and Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2023) | Viewed by 5257

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Department of Architecture, Construction and Design, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
2. National Research Council, Institute of Nanotechnology (CNR-NANOTEC), Via Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy
Interests: building integration of innovative technologies; energy saving; building energy
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Guest Editor
National Research Council, Institute of Nanotechnology (CNR-NANOTEC), Via Monteroni 73100, Lecce, Italy
Interests: flexible electronics; OLEDs; chromogenics; multifunctional devices

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
National Research Council, Institute of Nanotechnology (CNR-NANOTEC), Via Monteroni 73100, Lecce, Italy
Interests: energy saving; nanotechnology; thin film deposition; organic electronics; organic device physics; OLEDs

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims at reporting emerging trends in research activities dealing with novel technologies for energy efficiency, contributing to address the compelling challenges of climate change and fossil fuel depletion. It is well known that the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change following the COP 21 Conference on Climate Change, organized by United Nations, required the States to reduce carbon emissions in the building stock. In the European Union, almost 50% of final energy consumption is used for heating and cooling; out of this huge amount, 80% is used in buildings. Consequently, the priority is to enhance energy efficiency by exploiting renewable energies and innovative technologies, especially deriving from recent achievements in the field of nanomaterials research, with special reference to building integration of novel technologies.

This Special Issue will therefore deal with novel materials and devices (from chromogenics to semitransparent photovoltaics, OLEDs, super insulating materials, phase change materials, passive radiative cooling strategies, etc.), providing consistent improvements for construction or plant components within the building organism.

This new Special Issue—hosted by the scientific journal Buildings—aims to garner excellent contributions and high-impact works trying to assess the effectiveness of novel materials and devices on the final energy uses of cities and buildings.

Dr. Alessandro Cannavale
Dr. Marco Pugliese
Dr. Fabrizio Mariano
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • energy performance
  • nanomaterials
  • chromogenics
  • semitransparent photovoltaics
  • building integration
  • phase-change materials
  • aerogel
  • HVAC systems
  • OLEDs
  • heat transfer
  • passive cooling
  • visual comfort

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 2896 KiB  
Article
Optimising Design Parameters of a Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Double-Skin Facade in Different Climate Zones in Australia
by Siliang Yang, Francesco Fiorito, Alistair Sproul and Deo Prasad
Buildings 2023, 13(4), 1096; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings13041096 - 21 Apr 2023
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1970
Abstract
Energy used in buildings is mainly attributed to provide the desired thermal comfort, which could result in an increase in carbon emission and, in turn, lead to further environmental degradation. A Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Double-Skin Façade (BIPV-DSF) is a promising way to maintain indoor [...] Read more.
Energy used in buildings is mainly attributed to provide the desired thermal comfort, which could result in an increase in carbon emission and, in turn, lead to further environmental degradation. A Building-Integrated Photovoltaic Double-Skin Façade (BIPV-DSF) is a promising way to maintain indoor thermal comfort, obtained with low environmental impact and energy consumption. The appropriate design of BIPV-DSFs can maximise indoor thermal comfort and energy efficiency for buildings. This paper presents optimal BIPV-DSF design solutions, which are dedicated to offering comfortable and energy-efficient buildings, through optimisation of the most important design parameters of a BIPV-DSF under three different climate conditions in Australia. The results illustrate how thermal transmittance (U-value) and solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) of windows of the BIPV-DSF, as the most important design parameters, were optimised for application in the context of different climates, operation modes, and orientations. The paper contributes to the matters concerning the integrated effect of BIPV-DSFs on thermal comfort and energy performance in buildings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Technologies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings)
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13 pages, 2023 KiB  
Article
Study of the Correlation among Luminous Properties of Smart Glazing for Adaptive Energy Saving Buildings
by Antonio Piccolo, Mauro Prestipino, Maria Francesca Panzera and Roberto Baccoli
Buildings 2023, 13(2), 337; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings13020337 - 24 Jan 2023
Viewed by 2259
Abstract
A smart window, such as electrochromic or thermochromic windows, may not be able to accomplish at the same time energy efficiency and visual comfort functions, since satisfying one criterium interferes with the other. This recalls to the important issue of establishing precise relationships [...] Read more.
A smart window, such as electrochromic or thermochromic windows, may not be able to accomplish at the same time energy efficiency and visual comfort functions, since satisfying one criterium interferes with the other. This recalls to the important issue of establishing precise relationships among parameters affecting energy, glare control, and color rendering tasks and the influence on them of glazing material composition and preparation technique. With this aim, the luminous properties of a number of advanced glazings found in literature and of three home-made electrochromic devices differing by material composition and/or preparation technique are analyzed in this study. The investigation has involved the determination of the CIE (Commission International de l’Eclairage) Color Rendering Index (CIE CRI), the Correlated Color Temperature (CCT), and the luminous transmittance coefficient (τV) of the devices which are discussed with regard to their potential in absolving to energy and visual comfort tasks. Results lead to the main conclusion that the CIE CRI, CCT, and τV indexes are clearly linked by an exponential correlation. At low τV values (τV< 0.5), however, the correlation weakens and the variation of the CIE CRI and CCT indexes becomes entirely material dependent. The influence of preparation technique appears to be irrelevant since the color rendering indexes appear to be well correlated to τV over all the investigated τV range. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Technologies for Energy Efficiency in Buildings)
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