The High Performance Thermal Building Insulation Materials of Beyond Tomorrow - From Concept to Experimental Investigations

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Thermal Superinsulation for Building Applications - From Concepts to Experimental Investigations

The application of traditional thermal insulation materials requires thicker building envelopes in order to satisfy the requirements of the emerging zero energy and zero emission buildings. This work summarizes the steps from the state-of-theart thermal insulation materials and solutions, like vacuum insulation panels (VIP), gas-filled panels (GFP) and aerogels which all have various drawbacks, to our concepts and experimental investigations for making superinsulation materials (SIM) like e.g. nano insulation materials (NIM).publishedVersion© 2014 The Authors. Published by IRED/SEEK digital library. This is an open access article

High-Performance Nano Insulation Materials for Energy-Efficient Buildings

High-performance nano insulation materials (Hi-Per NIM) may be developed by exploiting the Knudsen effect for reduced thermal conductivity and thus make thermal insulation materials with a nanoporous air-filled structure. Hence, these NIMs are supposed to maintain their thermally insulating properties with nanopores filled with air at atmospheric pressure. NIMs with very low thermal conductivity values will enable the use of normal or thin wall thicknesses in energy-efficient buildings. Very thick building envelopes are not desirable due to several reasons, e.g. considering space issues with respect to both economy, floor area, transport volumes, architectural restrictions and other limitations, material usage and existing building techniques. This study will present an exploration of attempting to achieve NIMs through experimental laboratory development of hollow silica nanospheres (HSNS), hollow silica nanofibres (HSNF) and hollow silica integrated nanospheres and nanofibres, alongside theoretical modelling and sustainability investigations.publishedVersio