Interesting data, analysis and comparison, but there's more to it....
The last paragraph is the most important. "...water can quickly damage a building...". Methods of water storage seem quite important.
Anyway, for now going with their assumption that the thermal-mass is monolithic, a useful parameter here is
"Thermal diffusivity". The diffusion constant is in units of distance squared per unit time. For adobe-brick it is 0.27 mm^2 / s. There is an
explanation here. The useful "thermal depth" into a material depends on the relevant time duration in your application for heat conduction. If the time duration is 1 hour, then the thermal depth of adobe is 55 mm (2") , (so about the half-width of a brick). Whereas if the time is 24 hours, then the thermal depth is 768 mm (30"), closer to an earth-berm sized depth. If it's a half-year time-scale, then you have 34 ft to work with.
So for that reason the final graph could be a bit misleading. We assumed the mass is monolithic when it need not be. Typically the number of channels within the mass can be increased when a design needs faster heat transfer. There is a similar effect with water convection.
Also they've assumed identical temperature differences for all the materials, but while it's true many of these common materials (brick,
concrete, soil, air, etc.) only have 1/4 the specific-heat of water, they also have say 4 times the useful temperature range. So in applications with a wide temperature range, like a
rocket mass heater for example, a brick can get much hotter than water, so it can store as much heat or more than water, at least when the temperature swing is available.
Also the heat required to heat gypsum up to 200 deg.C (400 deg.F) is quite high, because you have to boil off some of the water in the calcium sulfate hydrate. If you then use that dehydrated calcium sulfate as a desiccant then it can absorb a lot of heat. So, there are plenty of details to consider here, lol.
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Yeah, other than all that it's wonderful.
