Ground Thermal Inertia for Energy Efficient Building Design: A Case Study on Food Industry

Industrial Buildings with Zero Energy Consumption: Cathedral Warehouse for Sherry Wines

The industrial sector needs solutions and strategies that allow buildings to reduce their energy consumption and develop their daily business activities. This paper discusses the long-term monitoring measures of indoor thermal conditions in a warehouse with zero energy consumption. The objective is to promote the use of passive design strategies within the industrial sector by analyzing an example of the feasibility of achieving controlled environmental conditions with zero energy consumption. In total, more than a million data points were processed and analyzed in different periods of the year. Experimental measurements showed strong gradients in the vertical distribution of temperature, this being a key aspect of the general behavior of the indoor environment of the warehouse. A standard comparison variable was developed to quantify the monthly and daily evolution of vertical stratification of the air to explain in detail the thermal behavior of the warehouse throughout the year. The results showed the efficacy of the design of these constructions to mitigate the high temperatures typical in a Mediterranean-Oceanic climate. This example of ingenuity in passive design demonstrates how, by combining the right strategies, the desired conditions can be obtained without any energy consumption.

Thermal Monitoring and Simulation of Earthen Buildings. A Review

Since ancient times, raw earth has been used worldwide as a construction material. Today, it is well known for its good environmental properties of recyclability and low embodied energy along the production process. Earthen walls regulate the interior temperature of the buildings, providing comfortable temperatures with a very low carbon footprint. As a result of those advantages, earthen building techniques have been revived and used for contemporary architecture. The aim of this paper is to review the state of the art about the thermal behaviour of earthen building, including all the monitoring and simulation analysis of real earthen constructions up to now. The paper presents the different earthen techniques known nowadays, analysing the most important thermal parameters and the thermal comfort achieved with each technique. Regardless the wide differences among the analyzed cases, the authors conclude that earth building is a suitable solution in hot and arid climates, since it preserves the indoor temperature within the thermal comfort limits most part of the time without any active system.

Energetic Retrofit Strategies for Traditional Sicilian Wine Cellars: A Case Study

Sicily is characterized by rural buildings, Palmenti, destined to wine production, which are scattered along the countryside and part of the local historical heritage. There are different types of rural buildings, but all have in common the use of ancient and well-established bioclimatic techniques for wine conservation and aging. Most of them were built with the double function of living space for the owner and productive spaces for all the activities correlated to the cultivations. Indeed, many rural houses, destined to the wine production, are characterized by wineries and wine cellars (the first for the wine production, the second to store the wine for the aging process). The growing production of high-quality Sicilian wines, very appreciated all over the world, leads to upgrade the ancient Palmenti to seek optimal hygrothermal conditions and, therefore, to guarantee high performance of the produced and stored wines. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the retrofit measures taken to comply with the energy regulations could affect the thermal behavior of a wine cellar constructed with consolidated bioclimatic technics. The results show the importance of not insulating the solid ground floor for maintaining suitable temperatures for the fermentation and aging of wine. This study can be useful for future analysis when comparing the optimal hygrothermal conditions of wine cellars located in homogeneous viticultural areas (with same climate, geology, soil, physical features, and height) in other parts of the world.