Passive cooling

What is passive design?

• Based upon climate
considerations.
• Attempts to control
comfort (heating and
cooling) without
consuming fuels.
• Uses the orientation of
the building to control
heat gain and heat loss.
• Uses the shape of the
building (plan, section)
to control air flow.
• Uses materials to
control heat.
• Maximizes use of free
solar energy for heating
and lighting.
• Maximizes use of free
ventilation for cooling.
• Uses shade (natural or
architectural) to control
heat gain. Passive Means of Design :
What is passive cooling of buildings?

• Involves the use of natural processes for heating or cooling to achieve

balanced interior conditions.
• The flow of energy is by natural means: radiation, conduction, or
convection without using any electrical device.
• To prevent heat from entering into the building or to remove once it has
entered is the underlying principle for accomplishing cooling in passive
cooling concepts.
• This depends on two conditions: the availability of a heat sink which is at a
lower temperature than indoor air, and the promotion of heat transfer
towards the sink. Environmental heat sinks are:
1. Outdoor air (heat transfer mainly by convection through openings).
2. Water (heat transfer by evaporation inside and / or outside the building
envelope).
3. The (night) sky (heat transfer by long wave radiation through the roof
and/or other surface adjacent to a building.
4. Ground (heat transfer by conduction through the building envelope).
Purpose of passive cooling
• Provides indoor comfort.
• Low maintenance.
• Zero/ Low energy consumption.
• Low running cost.
• promotes healthy environment.

Design strategies reduce heat gains :

• Natural Ventilation.
• Shading.
• Wind Towers.
• Courtyard Effect.
• Earth Air Tunnels.
• Evaporative Cooling.
• Passive Down Draught Cooling.
• Roof Sprays.
• Air vents.
Natural Ventilation
• In order to have a good natural ventilation, openings must be placed at
opposite pressure zones.
• Designers often choose to enhance natural ventilation using tall spaces
called stacks in buildings.
• With openings near the top of stacks, warm air can escape whereas cooler
air enters the building from openings near the ground.
• The windows, play a dominant role in inducing indoor ventilation due to
wind forces.
Types of natural ventilation
1. Stack Ventilation
2. Cross Ventilation
3. Night Ventilation

1. Stack Ventilation :
• Air is driven through the
building by vertical pressure
differences developed by
thermal buoyancy.
• The warm air inside the
building is less dense than
cooler air outside, and thus
will try to escape from
openings high up in the
building envelope.
• The process will continue if
the air entering the building is
continuously heated, typically
by casual or solar gains.
2. Cross Ventilation :
• Wind-induced ventilation uses pressures generated on the building by the
wind, to drive air through openings in the building.
• It is most commonly realised as cross-ventilation, where air enters on one
side of the building, and leaves on the opposite side, but can also drive
single sided ventilation, and vertical ventilation flows.
3. Night Ventilation :
• The use of the cold night air to cool down the structure of a building so that it can
absorb heat gains in the daytime. This reduces the daytime temperature rise.
• An overheating prevention strategy which uses little or no fossil energy, and
together with other passive strategies such as natural ventilation and shading , can
avoid the use of air conditioning.
• This saves energy (and CO2 emissions), and once set-up would require lower
maintenance than mechanical systems.
Shading
• Among all other solar passive cooling
techniques solar shading is relevant to thermal
cooling of buildings especially in a developing
country owing to their cost effectiveness and
easy to implement.
• The most effective method of cooling a
building is to shade windows, walls and roof
of building from direct solar radiation.
• Can use overhangs on outside facade of the
building.
• Each project should be evaluated depending
on its relative cooling needs:
1. Extend the overhang beyond the sides of the
window to prevent solar gain from the side.
2. Use slatted or louvered shades to allow more
daylight to enter, while shading windows
from direct sunlight.
3. Reduce solar heat gain by recessing windows
into the wall.
Types of shading
1. Shading by overhangs, louvers and awnings etc.
2. Shading of roof
3. Shading by trees and vegetation
4. Shading by textured surfaces

1. Shading by overhangs, louvers and awnings etc.

• The design of effective shading devices will depend on the solar orientation of
a particular building facade.
• For example, simple fixed overhangs are very effective at shading south-
facing windows in the summer when sun angles are high.
2. Shading by roofs

• Roofs can be shaded by providing roof cover of concrete or plants or

canvas or earthen pots etc.
• Shading provided by external means should not interfere with night-time
cooling.
• A cover over the roof, made of concrete or galvanized iron sheets, provides
protection from direct radiation.
• Disadvantage of this system is that it does not permit escaping of heat to
the sky at night-time.(Fig.2)
• A cover of deciduous plants and creepers is a better alternative.
• Evaporation from the leaf surfaces brings down the temperature of the roof
to a level than that of the daytime air temperature.
• At night, it is even lower than the sky temperature.(Fig.3)

• Covering of the entire surface area with the closely packed inverted earthen
pots, as was being done in traditional buildings, increases the surface area
for radiative emission.
• Insulating cover over the roof impedes heat flow into the building.
However, it renders the roof unusable and maintenance difficult (Fig. 4).
• Another inexpensive and effective device is a removable canvas cover
mounted close to the roof.
• During daytime it prevents entry of heat and its removal at night, radiative
cooling. Fig. 5 shows the working principle of removable roof shades.
3. Shading by trees and vegetation

• Trees can be used with advantage to shade roof, walls and windows.
• Shading and evapotranspiration (the process by which a plant actively
release water vapor) from trees can reduce surrounding air temperatures as
much as 5°C.
• Different types of plants (trees, shrubs, vines) can be selected on the basis of
their growth habit (tall, low, dense, light permeable) to provide the desired
degree of shading for various window orientations and situations.
• The following points should be considered for summer shading:
1. Deciduous trees and shrubs provide summer shade yet allow winter access.
The best locations for deciduous trees are on the south and southwest side
of the building. When these trees drop their leaves in the winter, sunlight
can reach inside to heat the interiors.
2. Trees with heavy foliage are very effective in obstructing the sun’s rays and
casting a dense shadow. Dense shade is cooler than filtered sunlight. High
branching canopy trees can be used to shade the roof, walls and windows.
3. Evergreen trees on the south and west sides afford the best protection from
the setting summer sun and cold winter winds.
4. Vertical shading is best for east and west walls and windows in summer, to
protect from intense sun at low angles, e.g. screening by dense shrubs, trees,
deciduous vines supported on a frame, shrubs used in combination with
trees.
5. Horizontal shading is best for south-facing windows, e.g. deciduous vines
(which lose foliage in the winter) such as ornamental grape or wisteria can
be grown over a pergola for summer shading.

4. Shading by textured surfaces

• The increased surface area of such a wall results in an increased outer
surface coefficient, which permits the sunlit surface to stay cooler as well
as to cool down faster at night (Fig. 6).
Wind towers
• In a wind tower, the hot air enters the
tower through the openings in the tower,
gets cooled, and thus becomes heavier
and sinks down.
• The inlet and outlet of rooms induce cool
air movement.
• In the presence of wind, air is cooled
more effectively and flows faster down
the tower and into the living area.
• After a whole day of air exchanges, the
tower becomes warm in the evenings.
• During the night, cooler ambient air
comes in contact with the bottom of the
tower through the rooms.
• The system works effectively in hot and
dry climates where fluctuations are high.
• A wind tower works well for individual Wind tower in Jodhpur Hostel to catch favourable
units not for multi-storeyed apartments. cool wind from southwest for passive cooling.
Courtyard Effect.

• Due to incident solar radiation in a courtyard, the air gets warmer and
rises.
• Cool air from the ground level flows through the louvered openings of
rooms surrounding a courtyard, thus producing air flow.
• At night, the warm roof surfaces get cooled by convection and radiation.
• If this heat exchange reduces roof surface temperature to wet bulb
temperature of air, condensation of atmospheric moisture occurs on the
roof and the gain due to condensation limits further cooling.

Courtyard as a moderator of internal climate

Earth air tunnels
• Another method for taking advantage of Mother Earth is to pre-condition
air by running it through subterranean cool pipes before it enters the
building, or by storing it in a below-grade rock storage chamber before use.
• At a depth of about 4 m below ground, the temperature inside the earth
remains nearly constant round the year and is nearly equal to the annual
average temperature of the place.
• A tunnel in the form of a pipe or otherwise embedded at a depth of about 4
m below the ground will acquire the same temperature as the surrounding
earth at its surface.
• Therefore, the ambient air ventilated through this tunnel will get cooled in
summer and warmed in winter and this air can be used for cooling in
summer and heating in winter.
• The living quarters (the south block of
RETREAT) are maintained at
comfortable temperatures (approx. 20-30
degree Celsius) round the year by the
earth air tunnel system, supplemented,
when-ever required, with a system of
absorption chillers powered by liquefied
natural gas during monsoons and with
an air washer during dry summer.
• However, the cooler air underground
needs to be circulated in the living space.
Each room in the south block has a 'solar
chimney; warm air rises and escapes
through the chimney, which creates an
air current for the cooler air from the
underground tunnels to replace the
warm air.
• Two blowers installed in the tunnels
speed up the process. This technique has been used in the composite climate of
Gurgaon in RETREAT building.
Evaporative Cooling.
• Evaporative cooling lowers indoor air temperature by evaporating water.
• It is effective in hot and dry climate where the atmospheric humidity is low.
• In evaporative cooling, the sensible heat of air is used to evaporate water,
thereby cooling the air, which, in turn, cools the living space of the
building.
• Increase in contact between water and air increases the rate of evaporation.
• The presence of a water body such as a pond, lake, and sea near the
building or a fountain in a courtyard can provide a cooling effect.
• The most commonly used system is a desert cooler, which comprises water,
evaporative pads, a fan, and pump.

1. Ground cover
2. Water sprinkler
3. Insulated roof
4. Shading trees
5. Water trough
A typical section showing passive solar features of walmi building,bhopal.
Passive Down Draught Cooling.
• In this system, wind catchers guide outside air over water-filled pots,
inducing evaporation and causing a significant drop in temperature before
the air enters the interior.
• Such wind catchers become primary elements of the architectural form also.
• Passive downdraught evaporative cooling is particularly effective in hot
and dry climates. It has been used to effectively cool the Torrent Research
Centre in Ahmadabad.
 Air vents

• Curved roofs and air vents are used in combination for passive cooling of air
in hot and dry climates, where dusty winds make wind towers
impracticable.
• Suited for single units, they work well in hot and dry and warm and humid
climates.
• A hole in the apex of the domed or cylindrical roof with the protective cap
over the vent directs the wind across it.
• The opening at the top provides ventilation and provides an escape path for
hot air collected at top.
• Arrangements may be made to draw
air from the coolest part of the
structure as replacement, to set up a
continuous circulation and cool the
living spaces.
• The system works on the principle of
cooling by induced ventilation, caused
by pressure differences.
Thank you