Influence of straw bale construction in air conditioning in tropical climatic condition

Abstract

Due to heavy industrialization that took place after the Industrial Revolution, per capita energy consumption in the world has risen exponentially, depleting the planet’s limited energy deposits. As a result of most the modern technologies, unfavourable conditions on the environment are created. So, there is an urgent requirement to move towards the methods, which minimize the energy demand. Electricity demand in Sri Lanka is higher than its production and the usage of Air Conditioning is increasing day by day. Therefore, straw bale was identified as a feasible substitute to be used in addressing the increasing demand for A/C due to many reasons such as low initial cost, low conductivity and durability. Hence, studying on the long term performance of straw bale construction will be highly essential. On this regard, actual measurements were taken and were used to validate the computer simulations for straw bales and other walling materials to get the A/C demands for different cases. These findings were expanded to its life cycle by adopting them to an A/C building. Comparisons were made with other common walling materials available in Sri Lanka. It was noted that the straw walls can reduce the A/C demand of a building and hence it can lead to a low life cycle cost of the structure.