1,720,996 research outputs found
Lo scambio termico negli ambienti con elementi solari passivi: confronto tra muro accumulatore e muro trombe
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Energy and microclimatic performance of restored hypogeous buildings in south Italy: The "Sassi" district of Matera.
No full textThe site of the “Sassi of Matera” classified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as World Heritage in 1993, is an exceptional example of traditional bioclimatic Mediterranean architecture. Within this immense artistic heritage, we find hypogea habitations, stone buildings, and mixed habitation – half-hypogeum and half-built. In this study, we analyze the energy and microclimatic performance of hypogeous structures in three states: not-restored, immediately after restoration, and a few years after restoration (in normal use). We monitored a surface hypogeum and a deep hypogeum. We performed a dynamic parametric simulation using the software EnergyPlus to quantify the energetic balance of the hypogeous structures during one calendar year. The energetic valuation of the surface hypogea shows that these environments, once restored and in a condition of normal use, give indoor comfort within the limits of comfort thermo-hygrometrics established by the comfort indices of predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PPD). The huge thermal mass of the walls ensures that the microclimate indoor conditions are regular throughout the seasons, without differences in the daily thermal oscillation. Deep hypogea without an air change system cannot reach thermal-hygrometric comfort values. We determined that these structures have a null thermal balance during mid-season, while in the summer the floor loses heat, thereby cooling the environment. The opposite occurs in winter. We can conclude that these buildings were designed as bioclimatic. In fact they can be used, after restoration, with limited use of technology systems
Analysis of energy saving using natural ventilation in a traditional Italian building
No full textIn summer natural ventilation is the most effective passive cooling system of the Mediterranean area. The correct exposure of the buildings and of the urban morphology to prevailing winds allows reducing the cooling loads also in non-bioclimatic buildings, without any cost. This paper points out the cooling capacity and the possibilities of energy saving offered by a correct natural ventilation by means of the simulation of a non-bioclimatic building, that is, a building having common characteristics as for construction materials and technologies
The interoperability of exergy and Life Cycle Thinking in assessing manufacturing sustainability: A review of hybrid approaches
No full textToday, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most employed tool for assessing the sustainability of products and processes, both from an environmental, social and economic point of view. Exergy is defined by literature as the amount of useful work that can be derived from a real system when it is brought into equilibrium with its environment. In the literature, it is considered an outstanding concept that can be applied to enhance the effectiveness of ordinary evaluation models such as LCA. The literature proposes a variety of hybrid approaches that combine Exergetic Analysis (EA) and LCA with different combination frameworks. The aim of this paper is to describe the potential of each hybrid method and to characterize the degree of interoperability between EA and LCA that each of them can provide. Nevertheless, there are drawbacks that seem to be too challenging to overcome: a variety of inconsistencies in the interpretation of the results due to the difficulty of the inventory phase and the ambiguity in the choice of the correct alternative in the standard databases; the link with old techniques that refers to obsolete approaches in finding data that suit to the updated goals and scopes; the difficulty in conducting an assessment affected by the least possible uncertainty. Following a theoretical overview of the principles of each hybrid method that binds EA and LCA, the authors want to provide a review from a completely different point of view than the state-of-the-art literature, on how effectively EA and LCA can interact with each other in order to provide a more holistic view of the system/process to be assessed. The fascinating circumstance that emerges from the review is that any exergy approach would be more effective if joined (not replaced) to the standard LCA, because it turned out to be complementary. This theory has long been developed by many authors in their case studies as a confirmation of what Gutowski wrote years ago: no single alternative criteria or subsidiary model, independently of how well aggregated, may offer a suitable answer for all conditions. Specifically, through this review, the practitioners would be able to choose the best suited hybrid methodology, according to their aims, join the outcomes together and achieve a transdisciplinary knowledge of the behavior of the study case system, in order to design the best improvement strategies
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