Abstract
To reduce the summertime cooling load of a plant factory, a concept design was performed for the double skin window which utilizes the low temperature air from a ground coupled heat exchanger. The design parameters were selected as the number of cavity air inlet, the cavity thickness, the location of cavity air inlet, and the configuration of cavity air outlet. A parametric study was conducted in a systematic way to evaluate the heat transfer characteristics of the double skin window. As the number of cavity air inlet and the cavity thickness increase, the heat flux from outside air to indoor air was decreased. The effect of the location of cavity air inlet was not significant and the larger cavity air outlet area gave us relatively better heat blocking performance from outside hot air. This study demonstrated that it is possible to develop an improved double skin window by utilizing a ground coupled heat exchanger.