Volume 11: Sustainable Energy Solutions for Changing the World: Part III

Analysis of the impact of urban pavement solar collector on urban air temperature and thermal collection: a coupled modelling approach Weijie Xu, Carlos Jimenez-Bescos. Conrad Allan Jay, John Kaiser Calautit, Yupeng Wu

Abstract

The asphalt pavement surfaces tend to absorb a large amount of heat through solar radiation and increase the urban air temperature. The thermal energy can be collected by water circulated through buried copper pipes and cool down the pavement surface, which decreases the air temperature and building cooling energy demand. This work aims to develop a method for determining the optimum areas to locate pavement solar collector (PSC) systems and simulate the reduction of ambient air and surface temperature by using a coupled computational modelling approach. A prototype of the PSC was developed, and lab-scale experiments were carried out for validation. Based on the simulated conditions, in the unshaded area, the near-surface temperature of the asphalt slab was reduced by up to 10℃, and the outlet water temperature increased by about 5℃. At the pedestrian height level, the reduction of air temperature was up to 4.6℃. This study further expands the investigation of the system by varying water velocity, inlet water temperature and air temperature. The proposed method could be used to optimise the positioning of the PSC to reduce urban surface and air temperature.

Keywords Pavement solar collector, Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD), urban street canyon, Urban Heat Island (UHI), thermal collection, heat mitigation