Abstract
High-performance thermal insulation is a critical need for buildings. This article presents the development and thermal characterization of composite foam insulation boards containing low-cost vacuum insulation cores. The composite foam-vacuum insulation boards were created in a semi-automatic operation in a foam insulation manufacturing plant. The low-cost vacuum insulation is a new technology called modified atmosphere insulation. The production process of modified atmosphere insulation is much simpler than traditional vacuum insulation manufacturing, and it has the potential for significant cost reduction at the same thermal performance. Prototypes of small- and full-scale composite insulation boards were created for testing and evaluation under laboratory and natural weatherization conditions. The laboratory tests showed that the overall thermal resistance of the composite insulation board is at least twice that of current rigid foam insulation used in building envelope. Ongoing test of the composite insulation in a natural exposure test facility indicates that the high thermal performance was retained through handling and installation as well as natural aging over a period of one and a half years.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1159-1172 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Applied Energy |
| Volume | 228 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 15 2018 |
Funding
This work was supported by the Building Technologies Office of the U. S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC. The authors would like to thank the DOE’s Mr. Sven Mumme, Dr. Karma Sawyer, Dr. Chioke Harris and Dr. Bahman Habibzadeh for their support of this project. We are grateful to Mr. Ron Esperza and Mr. John Jones of NanoPore as well as Mr. Mike Hubbard, Mr. Randy Strauser, Mr. Joseph Nelson and Mr. Wayne Vernon of Firestone Building Products for their efforts and support in making the MAI panels and composite boards needed for this project. We also thank Mr. Jerald Atchley of ORNL, who was primarily responsible for performing the hot box tests and setting up the Charleston test walls, Mr. Anthony Gehl of ORNL for his help with setting up data acquisition systems and Mr. Victor Pardue of ORNL Creative Services for help with a graphic. Finally, we thank Mr. Russell Glowner (Firestone) and Powers Roofing company (Caribou, Maine USA) for the installation demonstration of the composite insulation.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U. S. Department of Energy |
Keywords
- Composite foam insulation
- Guarded hot box
- Modified atmosphere insulation
- Natural exposure test
- Vacuum insulation
