Liquid filled prismatic louver façade for enhanced daylighting in high-rise commercial buildings

A liquid filled prismatic louver (LFPL) façade that can perform daylight and thermal energy harvesting with the potential to offer enhanced natural illumination levels to office spaces and thermally assist secondary thermal driven applications is proposed and analyzed. We focus the present simulation study on the evaluation of daylight enhancement in indoor space by redirecting light from a window opening to the ceiling of the room, and then-after a diffusive reflection from the ceiling-onward to the work plane of the room. Illumination simulations using LightTools, a forward ray tracing illumination simulation software, are performed for an office building space located in New York City. We show that the LFPL system achieves deeper natural light penetration, better uniformity and higher illuminance levels compared to an office space without the LFPL system. We further extend our study to a number of other representative cities in the continental US, covering different climatic zones. The LFPL system achieves good daylight harvesting performance. Finally, we discuss the potential of the LFPL system to capture solar infrared radiation heat within the liquid (e.g., water) volume and use it to assist in secondary thermal energy applications.