Enhancing the sustainability of shipping container homes in a hot arid region: A case study of Aswan in Egypt

Abstract

The promising idea of using shipping containers as homes, retail outlets, or even offices has recently been realized in practice. The aim of this research is to find ways to make these shipping container homes more sustainable. A real shipping container home in Aswan was selected as the main case study for this research. Three strategies were implemented: the first was to design a courtyard to act as a form of passive cooling; secondly, green roofs and green walls were used to act as an insulation layer for the container envelope; thirdly, the single glazing of the containers was replaced by double glazing. Using integrated design solutions (IES) and flow design software, these three strategies were compared to the base case model to assess their effectiveness. The results showed that the most effective strategy was the use of green roofs and green walls as these reduced energy consumptions by 13.5% compared to the courtyard which reduced total energy consumption by 3.6%. To optimize sustainability, photovoltaics (PV) panels were also installed. These provided the container users with 12.32 MWh clean energy.