Performance evaluation of a metamaterial-based new cool roof using improved Roof Thermal Transfer Value model

Abstract

A new cool roof with potential to generate significant energy savings in buildings has been developed from a metamaterial film named as RadiCold. Considering that the RadiCold film has unique optical and thermal characteristics and the current Roof Thermal Transfer Value model neglecting the effect of roof thermal mass that may lead to overestimating the cooling load from roofs, this work developed an improved Roof Thermal Transfer Value model and validated the model for both RadiCold cool roof and traditional roofing structures. Data from the reduced-size model building experiments showed that the improved Roof Thermal Transfer Value model can accurately describe the heat gains or losses via the roofs. Under real-world weather conditions in the United States (Tucson AZ, Los Angeles, CA, and Orlando FL), the improved Roof Thermal Transfer Value model has been applied to three types of roof exterior finishing: shingle, Thermoplastic Polyolefin (a cool roof material)and RadiCold. In a typical meteorology year, the modeling results show that the shingle and Thermoplastic Polyolefin roof transfer 78.9–294.1 kWh/(m2·yr)and 8.5–128.2 kWh/(m2·yr)of heat into the building space, respectively, but the RadiCold cool roof dissipates 137.6–268.7 kWh/(m2·yr)of heat from the building space to outdoor environment (e.g., sky). The cooling load reduction from utilizing RadiCold cool roof results in cooling electricity savings of 113.0–143.9 kWh/(m2·yr)compared to the shingle roof and 88.0–92.4 kWh/(m2·yr)compared to the Thermoplastic Polyolefin roof for the three analyzed locations with an assumed air conditioning system's coefficient of performance of 3.0.