Overview and future challenges of nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB) design in Southern Europe

In times of great transition of the European construction sector to energy efficient and nearly zero energy buildings (nZEB), a market observation containing qualitative and quantitative indications should help to fill out some of the current gaps concerning the EU 2020 carbon targets. Next to the economic challenges, there are equally important factors that hinder renovating the existing residential building stock and adding newly constructed high performance buildings. Under these circumstances this paper summarises the findings of a cross-comparative study of the societal and technical barriers of nZEB implementation in 7 Southern European countries. The study analyses the present situation and provides an overview on future prospects for nZEB in Southern Europe. The result presents an overview of challenges and provides recommendations based on available empirical evidence to further lower those barriers in the European construction sector. The paper finds that the most Southern European countries are poorly prepared for nZEB implementation and especially to the challenge opportunity of retrofitting existing buildings. Creating a common approach to further develop nZEB targets, concepts and definitions in synergy with the climatic, societal and technical state of progress in Southern Europe is essential. The paper provides recommendations for actions to shift the identified gaps into opportunities for future development of climate adaptive high performance buildings. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fractionation of industrial lignins: opportunities and challenges

Lignin is a readily available yet heavily underutilised resource due to its severe degree of variability related to the plant source and to the processes employed for its isolation. Being in most cases a by-product of technologies targeting other biopolymers, e.g. cellulose, less attention has been paid to the physicochemical features of the obtained lignin, which can therefore dramatically vary even on a batch to batch basis. To fully valorise the enormous potential of this material, the development of robust and economically sustainable strategies leading to lignin structures with well-defined and homogenous characteristics is of crucial importance. In this respect, fractionation represents a valid option, and thus is attracting increasing interest from the scientific community. Different methodologies have been established and tested on many lignins in the last few years. With the aim of extrapolating general trends in terms of the properties of the obtained lignin cuts and providing useful guidelines for researchers working in this topic, this contribution presents a critical review of the existing approaches for the fractionation of technical lignins. The applications where lignin fractions have found use are also overviewed, with a particular focus on the benefits gained as compared to pristine lignin.Lignin is a readily available yet heavily underutilised resource due to its severe degree of variability related to the plant source and to the processes employed for its isolation. Being in most cases a by-product of technologies targeting other biopolymers,e.g.cellulose, less attention has been paid to the physicochemical features of the obtained lignin, which can therefore dramatically vary even on a batch to batch basis. To fully valorise the enormous potential of this material, the development of robust and economically sustainable strategies leading to lignin structures with well-defined and homogenous characteristics is of crucial importance. In this respect, fractionation represents a valid option, and thus is attracting increasing interest from the scientific community. Different methodologies have been established and tested on many lignins in the last few years. With the aim of extrapolating general trends in terms of the properties of the obtained lignin cuts and providing useful guidelines for researchers working in this topic, this contribution presents a critical review of the existing approaches for the fractionation of technical lignins. The applications where lignin fractions have found use are also overviewed, with a particular focus on the benefits gained as compared to pristine lignin

Lignin carbon fibres: Properties, applications and economic efficiency

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.Lignin carbon fibres are cheaper than carbon fibres from petroleum sources, but they are yet to meet the required performance for automotive applications. They supersede petroleum-based carbon fibres in terms of cost, lightweight, environmentally sustainability, availability and renewability. It is evident that the performance of lignin carbon fibres depends on their sources (e.g. biomass type) and processing/treatments. To enhance the application of these fibres, there is need for in-depth understanding of the evolution of their properties considering their sources, extraction methods, and further processing. On the other hand, it is important to understand the driving factors in the economic efficiency of the carbon fibres. This will guide researchers and industrialists in the search for high performance lignin carbon fibres with acceptable economic efficiency.Final Accepted Versio