# Improving the Energy Efficiency of the Modular Buildings
## 1 Introduction  
The UK has a temperate climate. It gets cool, wet winters and warm, wet summers [1], and construction workers are often outside working on projects throughout the year. Eventually, their protective equipment and clothing will inevitably come into contact with mud and water. Hence, to help staff keep their clothes dry and ready to wear for the next shift, most sites accommodate staff changing facilities by using temporary modular buildings or so-called drying rooms to provide employees with changing facilities [2]. These facilities are indispensable for construction sites, as they are used on a daily basis and become increasingly crucial as the workforce expands throughout the construction project. However, when it is rainy, these spaces become filled with wet kit, which makes the combination of drying racks and heating alone a slower drying option and not effective enough to have garments dry and ready to use for the next day shift. It is mostly the case when changing rooms are locked up overnight with little to no ventilation, causing evaporated moisture from wet garments to remain in the atmosphere, making the environment uncomfortable, which could lead to mould spread affecting employees' welfare, and to retard this phenomenon, an extractor needs to be installed simultaneously with the heater for long hours to drygarments, which consumes a huge amount of energy. It was predicted in June 2023 that the construction industry will increase by 12% in the UK in 2024 and 3% in 2025 [3]. Due to this increasing trend, innovative drying methods should be developed to reduce energy consumption and improve the drying performance of drying rooms in construction sites; otherwise, a large amount of energy will be wasted every year, exacerbating the global energy crisis. Following the UK Government's 2019 amendment to the 2008 Climate Change Act, enshringing net zero in law, a construction company in the UK took on a board-level challenge and began the process of developing a new, long-term sustainability strategy that aims to create material change through the construction industry. Site drying room setups currently account for 10% of the company's carbon emissions; reducing this is vital for success. This project will bring a new approach to the market, using computer modelling and data analysis to help design an economically viable solution and push industry best practices for carbon reduction. As per these facts, a comprehensive study to determine the optimum drying condition of protective personal equipment is important, and the results will be beneficial for construction and other businesses such as firefighters, water sports, etc. The drying process, which refers to the removal of moisture remaining in fabric after squeezing or hydro-extraction, is one of the most energy-intensive processes [4]. The amount of moisture in a fabric depends on different properties such as thickness, structure, size, the shape of pores of the fabric, and also the chemical interaction between the water molecules and the surface of that fabric [5]. The drying capability is evaluated by the drying rate of the fabric, which is defined as the speed that the drying process takes, which is an important indicator to evaluate the drying performance of a wet garment [6]. There are three elements that favour the evaporation of water from wet clothes [7]:  
* High temperature: to transform liquid molecules to vapour. * Air movement: to carry water vapour away and prevent the air near clothes from becoming saturated with vapour. * Low humidity: evaporation will continue steadily, and water molecules will not return to clothes from the air. In general, the clothes drying process is divided into two parts.