Sweating Building: A Study of Self-Cooling Hydrogels for Application in Adaptive Architecture

Abstract

Hydrogels that are responsive to changing environments could have applications in passive cooling and indoor air temperature control for buildings. Most of the current studies of these applications are still experimental and remain on small-scale. In this thesis, I propose a self-cooling roof module that makes use of single network hydrogel with polyester-foam as structure (SN-Gel-FoS). In a climate like the one in Abu Dhabi, these roof modules would absorb moisture from the indoor air, reducing latent heat from the atmosphere during the nights, and release water via phase separation, cooling the air of the interior environment during the day. The SN-Gel-FoS demonstrates much higher tensile and compressive strength and less deformation after multiple cycles, compared to other SN-Gels. In this thesis, I adopted SN-Gel-FoS for a design proposal for 16 meters wide, 160 meters long farm school. There are 4328 square meters of 5-cm-thick SN-Gel-FoS embedded in the flat roof of this building. By supplying air through this composite roof, we can provide enough cooling for this building without any active heat exchanger or heat pump. This passive cooling method could reduce the operational energy consumption of this institution by more than 75%. At the same time, this translucent layer of hydrogel also provides ideal ambient lighting and unique spatial experience for its inhabitants, which includes children, teachers, and different types of farm animals.