The heat island phenomenon in major cities is partly due to the excessive use of concrete and brick, which causes many problems regarding thermal comfort and energy expenditure. The thermal behaviour of the envelope wall material depends on its density, heat capacity, and thermal conductivity, and its effect on the heat island intensity (HII) is reported in this paper. Experiments and simulations were carried out on the four most popular building materials: brick, aerated concrete, wood with glass-wool insulation, and glass fibre-reinforced concrete with glass-wool insulation, with each material having a dimension of 1 m × 1 m. Experiments to analyse the thermal behaviour of the wall materials were performed by exposing each material to heat radiation from 2 × 1000 W halogen lamps for 4 h, followed by 4 h of cooling. The HII simulations were carried out in a simple urban kampong in a tropical area using Energy2D software. Heat flow analyses confirmed the thermal behaviour of the four walls, which can be categorised into two types: heat storage of block wall (BW) type and heat flow inhibition of insulated sandwich wall (ISW) type. The BW type showed 0.32 °C higher indoor air temperature than the ISW type, while the HII simulation showed ISW to be 0.74 °C higher than BW; however, both types increase the intensity and need mitigation treatment. The results of this study are important for the technological approach for dealing with local warming to lower the energy expenditure of poor people in an urban area.

The role of thermal mass in indoor air-cooling during the day is a common area of study, which is particularly relevant for an era characterized by energy crises. Thermal energy storage (TES) technologies for application in rooms and buildings are not well developed. This study focuses on the use of coconut oil (co_oil) as a temperature control agent for room air conditioning systems in tropical countries such as Indonesia, given its capability to store large amounts of heat at temperatures around its melting point. Heat exchange studies between co_oil and the air environment were performed by considering three factors: Temperature difference between co_oil and the air environment, the heat absorption behavior and the release of co_oil, and the mass of co_oil required to have a significant effect. The co_oil cell sizes were formulated as responses to natural day and night air temperature profiles, while the performance of the co_oil mass for decreasing room air temperature was predicted using a thermal chamber.