The Trombe Wall as a passive air conditioning system for hot climates.

The residential and service sectors are responsible for a large portion of the energy demand in modern societies. Therefore, buildings are expected today to be energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. In this context, bioclimatic architecture and related systems seem shows a good way to achieve it. A relevant system in this issue is the Trombe wall, under study in the present work. Although this system has been studied and implemented in cold climates (in heating mode), not so many theoretical and experimental studies have examined its operation in hot climates (in ventilation mode). To collaborate in this regard, an air-ventilation Trombe Wall prototype has been made and analysed both theoretically and experimentally. The size of the protitype is1 m height, 0.6 m width and 0.2 m length and it has an outer glass surface with a hole at the top, an air chamber, and an inner insulating panel with a hole at the bottom. These experiments have been carried out both under controlled conditions in the laboratory, and outside. In this sense, physical and psychrometric behaviour have been obtained. As a conclusion, the system has produced air currents between 0.2 and 0.4 m/s, improving the feeling of comfort by 3 ºC. Thus, it demonstrates its possibilities of use as a passive ventilation system. Additionally, both air temperature and speed data trends have been fitted by mathematical formulation, which allows predicting the behaviour of the Trombe wall under different solar radiation conditions in hot climates.