Numerical simulation integrating passive cooling strategies for building thermal comfort in Guinea's climates

ABSTRACT

Due to the increased demand for indoor air conditioning, the residential sector in tropical regions is becoming more and more energy intensive. In this study, several passive cooling strategies in the building sector in Guinea, such as natural ventilation, thermal insulation, and cool coating roof, as well as the coupling between these different solutions, have been evaluated. Therefore, the thermal behaviour of a residential building in two climatic zones of Guinea is evaluated. The building thermal discomfort is assessed by the adaptive and conventional approaches, as well as the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) thermal stress indicators and the PMV-PPD indices. The results show that high levels of discomfort and thermal stress are present in the reference building. The use of the combination of passive cooling strategies allowed a reduction of the thermal discomfort evaluated by an adaptive approach of 74% in Conakry and 65% in Kankan. The WBGT index was improved by 42% in Conakry and 45% in Kankan. The operative temperature also decreased to 4.4°C for Conakry and 3.61°C for Kankan.

KEYWORDS:

• Thermal comfort
• BES
• passive cooling
• WBGT
• PMV-PPD
• tropical climate

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) grant ID [600039012] and the Government of the Republic of Guinea. We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Zainab BENSEDDIK from the MaSEEL Laboratory for her valuable assistance in proofreading this article. We appreciate her support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Credit authorship contribution statement

Mamadou Aliou II Diallo: Conceptualization, and design of study, data curation, formal analysis – writing – original draft and approval of the version of the manuscript to be published. Zaid Romani: Conceptualization and design of study – Writing – review and editing, critically for important intellectual content and approval of the version of the manuscript to be published. Mustapha Mahdaoui: Formal analysis, and approval of the version of the manuscript to be published. Mohammed Ahachad: Writing – review and editing, critically for important intellectual content and approval of the version of the manuscript to be published. Fatima Bahraoui: Approval of the version of the manuscript to be published.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by MESRSI_GUINEE and IsDB-ISFD Scholarship Programme for IsDB Least Developed Member Countries: [Grant Number ID: 600039012].