Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.
Worldwide energy consumption in residential and public
buildings represents almost one third of primary energy. It is
one of the larger contributors to fossil fuel use and the carbon
dioxide production. Therefore, many countries are currently
developing projects for the implementation of measures aimed
at energy efficiency for built environment aiming targets of
consumption reduction of 15% to 30%.
However, less careful implementation of some measures for
energy conservation is creating problems of water condensation
in both, the newly constructed and the old buildings. Those are
problems that created a bad perception regarding energy
conservation measures, and also resulted in serious quality
problems in built ambient.
The main goal of this work is to evaluate the condensation
risk in built environment and the influence on the energy
consumption of the “inside” thermal insulation placement. A
single-zone time-dependent mathematical model is developed
based on specific parameters characterizing buildings´ use for
commercial purposes.
Numerical solutions are determined for commercial
buildings over the course of a year. Suitable low cost strategies
for energy conservation are developed to avoid condensation
and mould growth for a typical classroom at the Federal
University of Paraná, Curitiba, PR, Brazil, and to prevent
further degradation in problem buildings.
