Comparative Study of Passive Methods for Reducing Cooling Load

It is predicted that 3.2% annual rise of energy consumption in developing countries. This means that there is a need to reduce energy consumption. One of the methods is through reducing cooling load in buildings since opportunities are present in it. This study aims to investigate the existing methods for cooling load reduction and to compare and recommend the most suitable method for Malaysian conditions. Several existing methods for cooling load reduction were researched and after applying parameters such as effectiveness, availability of material and practicality of method's application, three methods were selected. These methods were wall insulation by polystyrene, single low-emissivity window glazing and white painted roof. CFD analysis using ANSYS^copyright Fluent was then performed to observe the effect of temperature and energy consumption reduction. The case study was done on Seminar Room 1 in Heriot-Watt University Malaysia (Seminar Room 1). It was found that application of all methods used together has the most temperature and energy consumption reduction (0.980C and 9.5% monthly energy reduction). However, in terms of cost effectiveness, wall insulation was discovered to be the most cost-effective method. It was concluded that wall insulation is the most suitable cooling reduction method since it has second highest temperature reduction and the most cost-effective method.