Publications related to Laboratory of Integrated Comfort Engineering

Performance of energy piles foundation in hot-dominated climate: A case study in Dubai

Lyesse Laloui, Elena Ravera, Sofie Elaine ten Bosch

Energy piles represent an innovative technology that can help provide sustainable geothermal heating or cooling energy for thermal conditioning purposes. In hot-dominated climates, the interest is to inject heat in the ground and extract energy for space-c ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Decomposition method to evaluate district heating/cooling network potential at urban scale

François Maréchal, Luc Girardin, Ana Catarina Gouveia Braz, Bingqian Liu, Raphaël Briguet

In this work, a tool to design district heating networks (DHN) is presented and applied to the city of Lausanne as a case study. The evaluation of the buildings’ heat/cooling demand is performed using a Geographic Information System (GIS) database, built f ...

Associazione Italiana Di Ingegneria Chimica2024

Innovative thermophysical characterization of an ATF composite cladding: the case of silicon carbide

Andrea Cavaliere

Nuclear power is a powerful technology that plays an important role in the fight against climate change, and research is continuously engaged in studies that could further improve its safety. After the Fukushima accident, Accident Tolerant Fuels research h ...

EPFL2024

Design and assessment of an evaporating water-cooled methanation reactor for a SOE-based power-to-methane system

Philippe Aubin

The transition towards clean renewable energy sources, where wind and solar are prone to variation, requires adequate energy storage. Power-to-methane (PtM) systems can be part of the solution. Specifically, solid-oxide-electrolyser (SOE) based PtM systems ...

EPFL2024

Fusing Pre-existing Knowledge and Machine Learning for Enhanced Building Thermal Modeling and Control

Loris Di Natale

Buildings play a pivotal role in the ongoing worldwide energy transition, accounting for 30% of the global energy consumption. With traditional engineering solutions reaching their limits to tackle such large-scale problems, data-driven methods and Machine ...

EPFL2024

Experimental study of the hydrodynamic and thermal performances of ventilated wall structures

Dolaana Khovalyg, Mohammad Rahiminejad

The presence of a ventilated air gap behind the external cladding in a building envelope is known to have a tangible contribution to the overall performance of the wall assembly. In the present study, the hydrodynamic and thermal performances of ventilated ...

2023

DIET Controller: Dynamic Indoor Environment using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Arnab Chatterjee

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Systems utilize much energy, accounting for 40% of total building energy use. The temperatures in buildings are commonly held within narrow limits, leading to higher energy use. Measurements from office bui ...

EPFL2023

Transparent structured conductive coating for applications in smart windows

Jérémy Jacques Antonin Fleury

Solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth for a period of one hour contains more energy than that consumed by mankind over an entire year. Some of this solar energy is already collected by photovoltaic cells to cover the electricity needs of buildi ...

EPFL2023

Efficacy of temporal and spatial abstraction for training accurate machine learning models: A case study in smart thermostats

Rachid Guerraoui, Alexandre David Olivier Maurer, Omid Ardakanian

Smart thermostats are increasingly popular in homes and buildings as they improve occupant comfort, lower energy use in heating and cooling systems, and reduce utility bills by automatically adjusting room temperature according to measurements of their bui ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Building ventilation and outdoor air pollution: Implications for health, comfort and energy

Evangelos Belias

As humans spend most of their time indoors, indoor air quality (IAQ) significantly impacts their health. In parallel, building ventilation consumes significant energy, contributing to climate change. However, the relationships between the building ventilat ...

EPFL2023

Influence of outdoor air pollution on European residential ventilative cooling potential

Dusan Licina, Evangelos Belias

Residential ventilative cooling via natural ventilation is influenced by outdoor air pollution. However, relative to climate, outdoor air pollution is not comprehensively considered in determining the ventilative cooling potential of buildings. To assess t ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA2023

Energy, SBS symptoms, and productivity in Swiss open-space offices: Economic evaluation of standard, actual, and optimum scenarios

Dusan Licina, Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee, Verena Marie Barthelmes, Cecile Anne Berquand

The fundamental aspiration of new-generation high-performing buildings is to reduce energy use while securing indoor environmental quality conducive to human health and productivity. However, existing frameworks for identifying Key Performance Indicators ( ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

DeepValve: Development and experimental testing of a Reinforcement Learning control framework for occupant-centric heating in offices

Dolaana Khovalyg, Amirreza Heidari

Space heating controls in offices usually follow static schedules detached from actual occupancy, which results in energy waste by unnecessarily heating vacant offices. The uniqueness of stochastic occupancy profile and thermal response time of each office ...

2023

Dynamic indoor thermal environment using Reinforcement Learning-based controls: Opportunities and challenges

Dolaana Khovalyg, Arnab Chatterjee

Currently, the indoor thermal environment in many buildings is controlled by conventional control techniques that maintain the indoor temperature within a prescribed deadband. The latest research provides evidence that more dynamic variations of the indoor ...

2023

Taking a step back from glass towers facades to make them compatible with the 2050 targets

Sergi Aguacil Moreno, Bernard Paule

Skyscrapers or glass towers are an extremely common model throughout the world. In the current context of climate change and resource depletion, we need to develop new postures towards these objects, especially for existing buildings that are becoming obso ...

2023

Assessment of Monitoring Strategies for Inhalation Exposure and Occupancy in Office Environments

Seoyeon Yun

Given people's significant time spent indoors, ensuring good indoor air quality (IAQ) is essential because it significantly influences occupants' health and productivity. Office buildings consume about 50% of commercial building energy and 18% of total bui ...

EPFL2023

Renewable Energy Integration and Waste Heat Recovery for the Production of Sustainable Jet Fuel and Decarbonization of Industrial Heating Applications

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos, Réginald Germanier

The process synthesis and optimization methods used in this work include simulation of biomass gasification, hydrogen and synthetic natural gas production, and jet fuel production via a Fisher Tropsch unit. An energy integration approach, carried out by th ...

American Institute of Chemical Engineering2023

Thermal Conditions in Indoor Environments: Exploring the Reasoning behind Standard-Based Recommendations

Dolaana Khovalyg

Professionals in the building design and operation fields typically look at standards and guidelines as a reliable source of information and guidance with regard to procedural, contractual, and legal scope and requirements that are relevant to accountabili ...

2023

Toward contactless human thermal monitoring: A framework for Machine Learning-based human thermo-physiology modeling augmented with computer vision

Alexandre Massoud Alahi, Dolaana Khovalyg, Mohamed Ossama Ahmed Abdelfattah, Mohamad Rida

The transition towards a human-centered indoor climate is beneficial from occupants’ thermal comfort and from an energy reduction perspective. However, achieving this goal requires the knowledge of the thermal state of individuals at the level of body part ...

2023

Heat pumping and renewable energy integration for decarbonizing brewery industry and district heating

François Maréchal, Daniel Alexander Florez Orrego, Meire Ellen Gorete Ribeiro Domingos

The energy integration of brewery plants and urban agglomerations has many benefits in terms of rational energy use and reduced environmental impact, especially during scenarios of uncertain supply chain and volatile market prices. In fact, the diversifica ...

Elsevier2023