Greening the building envelope,facade greening and living wall systems

For greening the building envelope several concepts can be used, for example green roofs, fa?ades greened with climbing plants or living wall systems (modular pre-vegetated panels), etc. Greening the building envelope allows to obtain a relevant improvement of the its effi- ciency, ecological and environmental benefits as well as an increase of the biodiversity. Since the interest restoring the environmental integ- rity of urban areas continues to increase, new developments in construction practices with beneficial environmental characteristics take place, as vertical greening systems. Applying green fa?ades is not a new concept and can offer multiple benefits as a component of cur- rent urban design;considering the relation be- tween the environmental benefits, energy sav- ing for the building and the vertical greening systems (material used, maintenance, nutrients and water needed) the integration of vegetation could be a sustainable approach for the enve- lope of new and existing buildings.

Thermal Behaviour in Buildings with Green Covers Combined with Natural Ventilation, Green Facades and Green Roofs

The main aim of this paper was to study the influence of ventilation during a typical experimental day, in the internal air temperature as well as in internal surface temperatures under the conditions of the outer environment, using an experimental method which allows a comparison of the thermal performance between four cell tests： a prototype called control （no vegetation） and three with different combinations of vegetation （roofs and facades） installed in a region of tropical climate. The experiments were developed in four test cells with dimensions 2.0 m × 2.50 m × 2.7 m. Measurements of internal surface temperatures and internal air temperatures were collected with the use of specific equipment, a data logger （CR1000, Campbell Scientific Inc.）, connected with two multiplexers 32 channels （416AM Campbell Scientific Inc.）. Data were recorded over a year and a typical heat day was selected, which was September 24, 2015. The results show that ventilation affects the internal temperature of the air, so that this gets even surpass the external temperature. Regarding surface temperatures, increased temperature, except those which are provided with vegetation, namely, the surfaces which have green walls and green roofs file the lower temperatures. Therefore, we can confirm the ability of vegetation to maintain more pleasant internal conditions compared to the test cells built with conventional materials, thus it can reduce cooling load efficiency.

Thermal Response to Heat in Buildings with Green Covers for Tropical Climate： Green Facades and Green Roofs

The main aims of this paper were to study and demonstrate the benefits the plant systems can provide indoors in a critical heat day. This study proposed an experimental method to try to understand the thermal response to heat of four different systems： a prototype called control （no vegetation） and three with different combinations of vegetation （green roofs and green facades） installed in a tropical climate region. The experiments were developed in four test cells with dimensions 2.0 m × 2.50 m× 2.71 m. Measurements of internal surface temperatures and internal air temperatures were collected with the use of specific equipment, a data logger （CR1000, Campbell Scientific Inc.）, connected with two multiplexers 32 channels （416AM Campbell Scientific Inc.）. Data were recorded over a year and a critical day heat was selected, which was September 24, 2015.The results show that the use of plant systems in buildings establishes a passive technique in reducing energy consumption because of the high incidence of summer solar radiation which is reduced and simultaneously, it maintains thermal internal conditions more pleasant than external ones, because of the best thermal behaviour, which was observed in the test cell with vegetation on both roofs and facades. The biggest difference between maximum internal air temperatures registered was 2 ℃.

Green Walls as Mitigation of Urban Air Pollution:A Review of Their Effectiveness

Mitigation of urban air pollution has been constrained by the availability of urban spaces for greening.Green walls offer the prospect of greening spaces and surfaces without requiring large areas.Green walls can largely be divided into green facades where the aboveground parts of plants rooted in soil and pots grow directly on,and living walls holding bags,planter tiles,trays and vessels containing substrates in which plants are grown.Green facades and living walls can be continuous or modular with repeating units that can be assembled for extension.This review aims to pres­ent the effectiveness of green walls in removing different types of air pollutants in indoor and outdoor environments.It examined more than 45 peer-reviewed recently published scholarly articles to achieve the aim.It highlights that most of the studies on green walls focus on particulate matter removal and green walls could effectively remove particu­late matter though the effectiveness varies with plant types,air humidity,rainfall and its intensity,leaf area index and contact angle,green wall surface coverage ratio,as well as the height of green walls.Increasing the height of green walls and optimizing their distance from roadsides could promote the deposition of particulate matter.Washing off could regenerate plant surfaces for capturing pollutants.Green walls are also effective in removing NO2,O3,SO2 and CO.Indoor active living walls,when properly designed,could have air purifying performance comparable to a HVAC system.The performance of green walls could be optimized through polycultures,selection of plants,surface coverage and height,and air inflow.

Global technological advancement and challenges of glazed window,facade system and vertical greenery-based energy savings in buildings:A comprehensive review

There are many factors that have a major influence on reducing the energy expenditure in building sector.This research aims at qualitative and quantitative assessment of those factors such as double glazed windows,ver-tical greenery systems(VGS),integrating of semi-transparent photovoltaic device with architectural design of buildings,energy saving by using heat reflecting coating,passive climate control methods,energy saving by shading,building energy performance enhancement by using optimisation technique,double skin green facade,etc.through a holistic and thematic approach.Amongst the aforesaid techniques,VGS is found the most reliable,efficient and sustainable solution.Attractive VGS can improve the urban environment,increase biodiversity,mit-igate pollution also results economic benefit of the buildings as like as energy savings and decreasing surface temperature.Four fundamental energy saving methods are used in VGS which are considered as passive energy saving mechanism.Firstly,interception of solar radiation due to the shadow risen by the vegetation;secondly,vegetation also provides thermal insulation;thirdly,plants evapotranspiration helps for evaporative cooling of building;finally,building blockage makes a variation of wind effect on building.The peak cooling load of ivy coated green building wall has been reduced by 28%.If a VGS is installed without windows and building fac-ing on west,east,south and north correspondingly,the reduction in the cooling load capacity of the building is observed to be up to 20,18,8 and 5%,respectively.Very high thermally resistive glazed areas on building envelope can be secured via thin film PV glazing and vacuum glazing products with an average U-value of 1.1 and 0.4 W/m 2 K,respectively.Energy use policies are also helpful to improve energy consumption scenario of buildings.For developing more energy-efficient,sustainable and eco-friendly buildings,these techniques might be helpful for the building designers and architects.