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Hi, very interesting question. The answer is found in HeatBalFiniteDifferenceManager.cc since it appears to not be documented elsewhere (see e.g. line 1934 onward in the IntInterfaceNodeEqns function).

At a node separating 2 massless materials, Cp and ρ are 0 and simplifying the implicit heat equation in your post yields

Tj+1i=Ri1Tj+1i+1+Ri+1Tj+1i1Ri+1+Ri1,

where Tj+1i is the temperature at node i at the newest timestep j+1, and R is thermal resistance. Transient behavior at node i may be driven by transient boundary conditions or propagate from non-massless materials in the model. This is the equation used by EnergyPlus in this situation (line 1942 in the code).

When a node separates a massless material (e.g. on the left at i1) and a non-massless material (e.g. on the right at i+1), Cp and ρ are retained for the non-massless material in the implicit heat equation. However, the kEΔx term corresponding to the massless material is related to the thermal resistance of the massless material Ri1 and essentially replaced by 1Ri1 (line 2080 in the code).