Thermal and structural properties of a hemp–lime biocomposite

Abstract The need to reduce greenhouse gases emission produced by the building sector leads to the research of renewable and less impacting materials that can replace traditional ones. This subject has encouraged new researches on biocomposite concretes with the aim to exploit renewable resources like vegetal fibres intended as materials whose production processes are generally characterized by low costs and energy demand. This biocomposite is obviously much lighter than concrete and, therefore, can be suitably used in such cases where a structure cannot be overloaded, for instance in the realization of a green covering on top of a preexistent building. In this work, a first analysis of the…

Role of Green Coverings in Mitigating Heat Island Effects: An Analysis of Physical Models

Worldwide, governments are introducing several rules and standards in the aim of limiting the quantity of primary energy for air conditioning of buildings and supporting the use of renewable source of energy for generating thermal and electric energy to be utilized in buildings such as the European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings [1]. Along with these interventions, another important action takes currently place in the building sector, that is the introduction of passive structural components of the envelope, able to reduce the requirements of energy for air conditioning purposes. Among these building components, the so-called green roofs are becoming more and more interest…

Dati climatici per gli edifici sostenibili

Comparison Between Conventional and Vegetated Roof by Means of a Dynamic Simulation

In this paper, a dynamic simulation of a building located in the Campus University of Palermo, Italy, has been carried out. We considered two different scenarios; in the first one, the building as it is, with a conventional covering, while in the second one the roof was equipped with a green roof. The results of the two simulations have been compared, suggesting that such building component could contribute to the energy savings of the building. However, it has to be considered as part of other possible actions devoted to improve the energy efficiency of the whole building. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://…

Solar radiation for buildings and energy applications: the feasibility of the reduced data set for Mediterranean sites

In the last years several computer programs for thermal simulation of buildings have been quickly spread; they allow to describe the thermal behavior of buildings and to verify their energy efficiency, in order to suggest eventual improvements as from the design stage. Most of these simulation tools generally need a complete input data set and, in particular, information referring to the climatic conditions of the site where buildings will be built-up. As it is well known, among climatic issues, particularly important for the thermal energy balance is the solar radiation. In this paper authors present a short reference year of the solar radiation, more precisely the Monthly Average Day (MAD…

Solar radiation for buildings application: generating data set for mediterranean sites

Fostering the energy efficiency through the energy savings: The case of the University of Palermo

This paper reports the strategy implemented by the Palermo University (Italy) aimed at fostering the energy performance of its campus, particularly towards financing energy saving measures. The basic idea is that the money saved through the energy efficiency actions, constitute the main flywheel to fund further savings and energy efficiency interventions. Results of this paper might bring a useful contribution to the energy planning of cities, since campuses may be regarded as emblematic case study of what can be done in cities because they reproduce, at a little scale, the functioning of wider urban contexts.

Greening a university campus: trends of energy consumption and possible sustainable paths

Recent years have seen an increasing public interest in issues related to energy saving and environmental pollution reduction of public buildings, such as those in university campuses, that should set an example of sustainable development. University campuses are usually characterized by the daily presence of a high number of people working and living in a relatively limited area. They are sites of a wide spread of functions, ranging from teaching to laboratory activities, from housing and food preparation to local transportation. All these activities require remarkable amount of energy that, actually, are not always utilized with the best possible efficiency. This calls for a deep reconsid…

Rassegna dei metodi di calcolo per la modellazione termica di coperture a verde.

Experimentally approaching the analysis of the thermal performances of green roofing in Mediterranean climates

Materiali naturali in edilizia: analisi sperimentali e primi risultati.

The importance of reliable climatic data in the energy evaluation

Abstract In the last few years, more and more attention has been focused on energy issues, as it is pointed out, for example, by the Directive 2002/91/EC on the Energy Performance of Buildings and Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources. However, in order to do that, reliable tools for technicians to design systems for such topics should be provided. Nowadays, several software are available; the weak point is the availability of reliable climatic data and, above all, the ones referring to solar radiation. In this work, after a short overview of the world climatic databases, a description of three statistical methods for the elaboration of a climatic…

A Case-Study of Green Roof Monitoring: The Building of Council for Agricultural Research and Economics in Bagheria, (Italy)

The energy saving in building goes on as an important challenge in the policy of Developed Countries. While the issue of energy building efficiency in heating season has deeply been investigated for a long time, the issue of energy building efficiency in cooling season is relatively recent. Moreover, considering the increase of electric consumption for air-conditioning in summer, mainly due to the growing quality of life, the research of technologies for reducing energy building consumption during this season becomes essential. The green roof represents a technology useful to reduce the energy consumption during the cooling season. In this work the authors report the results of a monitoring…

A model for predicting the potential diffusion of solar energy systems in complex urban environments

Abstract The necessity to reduce greenhouse gases emission produced by energy building consumptions and to cut the energy bill (mainly due to the use of fossil sources) leads to the employment of renewable energy sources in new planned scenarios. In particular, more and more often municipal energy and environmental plans pay great attention to the possibilities of employment of the solar technologies at urban scale. Solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) systems are, by far, the most suitable tools to be utilized in urban areas. Obviously, the proper adoption of such systems in buildings does call for the availability of calculation methods suitable to provide the actual level of exploitation …

Embedding energy consumption for lighting in the evaluation methods of the energy performance of buildings

Composite Building Materials: Thermal and Mechanical Performances of Samples Realized with Hay and Natural Resins

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 Recent years have seen an increasing public interest in issues related to energy saving and environmental pollution reduction in the building sector. As a result, many directives have been issued, the most important being the Directive 2010/31/EU (EPBD Recast) on the energy performance of buildings, which requires that "Member States shall ensure that by 31 December 2020 all new buildings are nearly zero-energy buildings". This goal can be obtained not only by reducing energy demand for heating and cooling, but also, for example, by improving building envelope performances. In this work, a first analysis of the thermal and structural behavi…

A simplified method for the environmental impact of urban transportation

Hystorical review of Citrus tristeza virus with particular reference to Italy

L'Anno-Tipo per la simulazione energetica degli edifici - Costruzione dell'Anno-Tipo di Palermo

Green Roofs as Effective Tools for Improving the Indoor Comfort Levels of Buildings—An Application to a Case Study in Sicily

In the line of pursuing better energy efficiency in human activities that would result in a more sustainable utilization of resources, the building sector plays a relevant role, being responsible for almost 40% of both energy consumption and the release of pollutant substances in the atmosphere. For this purpose, techniques aimed at improving the energy performances of buildings&rsquo

Generation of a Test Reference Year (TRY): an application to the town of Palermo

The improvement of the energy efficiency of buildings calls for the availability of tools for evaluating and simulating the thermal behaviour of buildings, needing as input climatic databases. These databases contain a very large amount of data, resulting in long computational time analysis. Therefore, simple aggregation methods are used, among which the test reference year (TRY). In this paper, a comparison between two statistical methodologies for compiling a TRY, the Belgian and the Sandia methods, is presented. Then, the two methods have been utilized for compiling the TRY for the town of Palermo, Italy, and compared both statistically and by means of two simple applications, obtaining …

Modelling within-canopy heat exchanges of green roofing

Role of green coverings in mitigating heat island effects: an analysis of physical models

Worldwide, governments are introducing several rules and standards in the aim of limiting the quantity of primary energy for air conditioning of buildings and supporting the use of renewable source of energy for generating thermal and electric energy to be utilized in buildings such as the European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings [1]. Along with these interventions, another important action takes currently place in the building sector, that is the introduction of passive structural components of the envelope, able to reduce the requirements of energy for air conditioning purposes. Among these building components, the so-called green roofs are becoming more and more interest…

The importance of reliable climatic data in the urban energy policy

In the last years, more and more attention has been focused on energy issues, in particular at urban level, as it is pointed out by the Directive 2002/91/EC on the Energy Performance of Buildings. In fact, the building sector encompasses nearly 30% of the energy whole consumptions. To try to limit such consumptions, both central and local governments should plan effective policies, such as promoting the use of renewable sources and of more energy efficient buildings (e.g. by means of green coverings). But in order to do that, local administrations should provide reliable tools for engineers and technicians to plan such systems. Nowadays, several software are available; the weak point is the…

L’Anno-Tipo di Radiazione Solare per la città di Palermo

Experimental Study on the Performance of Timber Frame Wall Panels in Mediterranean Construction

Only recently, the use of wooden buildings is spreading in the central and southern parts of the Italy due to national and EU policies on eco-sustainability and energy saving. Knowledge of the durability of the building envelope elements, generally made with dry assembled stratified systems, is still insufficient. The paper presents the first results of a durability evaluation of multilayer timber panel applied to Platform Frame System buildings, focusing on the variation of energy performance over time. The case study describes the construction of two single-family houses in the municipality of San Cataldo (Sicily, Italy). The used timber multilayer panel presents a stratigraphy suitable f…

Caso Studio: Definizione Anno-Tipo per la Città di Palermo

New sustainable technologies for buildings: the use of green roofs

Comparison of methodologies for Test Reference Year (TRY) generation for Mediterranean sites

The improvement of the energy efficiency of buildings calls for the availability of tools for evaluating and simulating the thermal behaviour of buildings. These simulation tools generally need a complete input data set and, in particular, information referring to the climatic conditions of the site where buildings are built-up. Among climatic issues, particularly important for the thermal energy balance is the solar radiation. However, this huge mass of data is not very useful in this form, so simple aggregation methods have been developed in order to run these simulation computer programs: the test reference year (TRY) is one of the most used methods. In this paper the comparison of two m…

Coperture a verde: aspetti energetici e di certificazione

Negli ultimi anni, la riscoperta dell’architettura bioclimatica, parzialmente legata alla consapevolezza dell’inadeguatezza della maggior parte degli edifici nel sud Europa nei mesi più caldi dell’anno, ha portato al reimpiego di vecchie tecnologie, abbandonate a seguito dell’introduzione dei sistemi di raffrescamento meccanici. In questo contesto, i tetti verdi stanno diventando una soluzione tecnologica interessante, in crescita degli ambienti urbani, dal momento che essi apportano alcuni benefici significativi, tra i quali la riduzione del consumo di energia per gli scopi di climatizzazione, la riduzione delle emissioni di gas serra, la riduzione dell’effetto “isola di calore”, un miglio…