Radiant cooling of an enclosure

The purpose of this study is to analyze the potential for radiant cooling using the atmospheric sky window and to evaluate the desired characteristics of a radiant cooling material (RCM) applied to the ceiling window of a three-dimensional enclosure. The thermal characteristics of the system are governed by the geometry, ambient temperature, sky radiative temperature, amount of solar energy and its direction, heat transfer modes, wall radiative properties, and radiative properties of the RCMs. A semi-gray band analysis is utilized for the solar and infrared bands. The radiosity/irradiation method is used in each band to evaluate the radiant exchanges in the enclosure. The radiative properties for the RCM are varied in a parametric study to identify the desired properties of RCMs. For performance simulation of real RCMs, the radiative properties are calculated from spectral data. The desired solar property is a high reflectance for both opaque and semi-transparent RCMs. For a semi-transparent RCM, a low value of the solar transmittance is preferred. The desired infrared property is a high emittance for an opaque RCM. For a semi-transparent RCM, a high infrared transmittance is desired, and the emittance should be greater than zero.