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Double skin façade represents an additional skin on the outside wall of the building with the idea of reducing building's energy demand. The zone formed by adding a skin can be sealed or ventilated either naturally or mechanically. This paper shows the results of delivered heating and cooling energy for an office building during heating season with 3 different ventilation strategies and 90 double skin façade configurations. The results were obtained by using EnergyPlus simulation program. In all observed cases, adding double skin façade leads to a decrease in delivered heating energy by as much as 55.80%, but delivered cooling energy might increase if proper glazing type is not selected. The best results were obtained by using triple glazing as inner skin of double façade.

Heavy mass materials used in building structures and architecture can significantly affect building energy performance and occupant comfort. The purpose of this study was to investigate if thermal mass can improve the internal environment of a building, resulting in lower energy requirements from the mechanical systems. The study was focused on passive building energy performance and compared annual space heating and cooling energy requirements for an office building in Belgrade with several different applications of thermal mass. A three-dimensional building model was generated to represent a typical office building. Building shape, orientation, glazing to wall ratio, envelope insulation thickness, and indoor design conditions were held constant while location and thickness of building mass (concrete) was varied between cases in a series of energy simulations. The results were compared and discussed in terms of the building space heating and cooling energy and demand affected by thermal mass. The simulation results indicated that with addition of thermal mass to the building envelope and structure: 100% of all simulated cases experienced reduced annual space heating energy requirements, 67% of all simulated cases experienced reduced annual space cooling energy requirements, 83% of all simulated cases experienced reduced peak space heating demand and 50% of all simulated cases experienced reduced peak space cooling demand. The study demonstrated that there exists a potential for reducing space heating and cooling energy requirements with heavy mass construction in the analyzed climate region (Belgrade, Serbia)

The cement industry contributes about 5% to global anthropogenic CO2 emissions, and is thus an important sector in CO2-emission mitigation strategies. Carbon dioxide is emitted from the calcination process of limestone, from combustion of fuels in the kiln, and from the coal combustion during power generation. Strategies to reduce these CO2 emissions include energy efficiency improvement, new processes, shift to low carbon fuels or waste fuels in cement production, increased use of additives in cement production, alternative cements, and CO2 removal from flue gases in clinker kilns. Increased use of fly ash as an additive to cement and concrete has a number of advantages, the primary being reduction of costs of fly ash disposal, resource conservation, and cost reduction of the product. Since the production of cement requires a large amount of energy (about 2.9-3.2 GJt-1), the substitution of cement by fly ash saves not only energy but also reduces the associated greenhouse gas emissions. The paper evaluates the reduction of CO2 emissions that can be achieved by these mitigation strategies, as well as by partial substitution of cement by fly ash. The latter is important because the quality of the produced concrete depends on the physical-chemical properties of the fly ash and thus partial substitution as well as the type of fly ash (e.g., the content of CaO) has an effect not only on energy consumption and emissions, but also on the produced concrete quality.

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