An investigation on wind-catcher technology and its applicability in passive cooling
Mehrnoosh Ahmadi
An investigation on wind-catcher technology and its applicability in passive cooling.
Rel. Mario Grosso. Politecnico di Torino, Master of science program in Architecture Construction City, 2015
Abstract
Today, depletion of natural resources, global warming and increase of fossil fuel price is a real concern of human beings. Moreover, the energy used in buildings for ventilation, heating and cooling purposes, accounts for more than 40% of total buildings energy consumption. However, the increasing level of damage to the environment has led researchers, environmentalists and architects to use passive cooling techniques to satisfy cooling needs. As a natural ventilation device, wind-catchercan be utilized as a sustainable attempt for cooling and ventilation purposes.
The objective of this thesis is to review and provide a comprehensive literature on wind-catcher systems and to investigate the effect of them in natural ventilation. For this purpose, SperaVent as a simulation software for evaluating summer energy performance of naturally ventilated buildings has been used to study various configurations of one-sided wind-catchers in Palermo city, the climatic characteristic of which is quite similar to Middle East area as the origin of this architectural phenomenon.
The effect of height, size and direction of inlet and outlet apertures and orientation of tower respect to building has been studied. The result of the experiment shows that with a proper positioning of the tower, approximately 60 percent of reduction in energy requirements can be achieved. It is also evident that increasing the height of tower and enlarging the building's aperture can increase wind-catcher's efficiency.
Finally, the amount of saved electricity is estimated assuming the installation of wind towers in future residential buildings in hot- dry and hot-moderate provinces of Iran.
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