Project Overview

Thermal energy storage is an effective strategy for improving building energy efficiency by reducing heating and cooling demand and associated greenhouse gas emissions. Phase change materials (PCMs) enable this by absorbing and releasing large amounts of latent heat at near constant temperatures during phase transitions, these by stabilizing indoor thermal conditions when integrated into building materials. As PCM-enhanced construction materials become more widely adopted, understanding their environmental behavior, including potential volatile organic compound and particulate emissions, is increasingly important for ensuring safe and sustainable use. This project focuses on developing a sensing and data processing framework to monitor VOC and particulate emissions from PCM-enhanced building materials. Compact environmental sensors integrated with a microcontroller-based systems are used to collect real-time data, while data fusion techniques are explored to improve readability. This work aims to support safer material integration and scalable monitoring approaches for energy-efficient buildings.