Theoretical Analysis of a Newly-Developed Model of Household Green Building

With rapid urbanization of rural areas in China, high fossil fuel consumption in traditional rural buildings further aggravates national energy deficiency and leads to limited improvement of indoor thermal comfort. In order to efficiently improve the indoor thermal comfort of rural buildings with solar energy and biomass, a 30-m² household green building was newly-developed to integrate a thermostatic digester, which was temperature-controlled by solar energy and a low-temperature radiant bed in a household building, considering farmers’ winter living habits in Northern China. Indoor temperature distribution of the newly-developed household green building, the traditional household building, and the modified household building was simulated by fluent under winter conditions, and indoor thermal comfort was subsequently evaluated by Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Predicted Percent Dissatisfied (PPD). The results showed that indoor temperature distribution of the newly-developed household green building was the most uniform among three buildings. When outdoor ambient temperature was –20 °C, temperature near window of the newly-developed green building was 7 °C, and indoor temperature of the newly-developed green building was 16~20 °C. When people were staying in house quietly, standing or working lightly, indoor relative humidity was 30%~60% and indoor average wind speed was 0.1~0.3 m s⁻¹, people felt neutral in the newly-developed household green building or the modified household building, while felt cold in the traditional household building. Furthermore, PPD of the newly-developed household green building was 4.86% lower than the modified household building. Therefore, compared to the modified and traditional household buildings, indoor thermal environment of the newly-developed household green building was the best.