Scientific breakthrough: University invents heat-regulating building material
In a major scientific breakthrough with important long-term environmental consequences, researchers at The University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) have developed a material that will cut the amount of energy a building uses by more than one-third.
The material has the remarkable quality of being able to retain and release heat according to the specific temperature requirements for a building and will help dramatically reduce heating and cooling bills.
It has the unique advantage of possessing a larger energy storage capacity with faster thermal response than existing materials and could be cheaply manufactured.
If, for example, the required optimum temperature in a room is 22°C, the material can be fixed so that it starts absorbing any excess heat above that temperature.
The heat-regulating material can be used in existing buildings as well as during the construction of new real estate and could be applied anywhere, from walls and roofs to wallpaper.
The material looks like a circular tablet with the circumference of a large coin in the laboratory. It can be manufactured in a variety of shapes and sizes, including so small that it can be sprayed as an unobtrusive microscopic film to surfaces.
The building material was recently awarded a patent application approval in China, the University was in a position to announce this week, and patent applications are in the pipeline in other countries.
It was invented by researchers at the University’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies.
The scientists responsible for the invention are: project leader Professor Jo Darkwa, who is Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies; Research Associate Oliver Su; and, PhD student Tony Zhou.
“The construction industry produces more carbon emissions than any other industry in the world – even more than aviation. In China, the building sector is one of the highest energy consuming sectors, accounting for about 30% of total energy usage and also a significant proportion of pollutant emissions,” noted Professor Darkwa.
“This material, if widely used, could make a major impact in the world’s efforts to reduce carbon emission,” he said.
The basic structure of the material has to be engineered for a specific temperature before it is used. The next developmental steps will include creating material which can be used for both heating and cooling applications.
“The material won’t make air-conditioners obsolete, because you still need an air conditioner to control humidity and air movement. This material purely reduces the amount of excessive heat energy in a room,” said Professor Darkwa.
Professor Darkwa said the University is looking to develop the material further as well as commercialise it.
It already has a number of sponsors and partners involved in the research, including the Ningbo Science and Technology Bureau – which provided important funding and support for the initial two-year research – and private companies based in China.
The material could save up to 35% of energy in a building and scientists believe it could also be used in solar panels and LED (light-emitting diode) lighting to enhance the efficiency of these alternative energy-generating technologies.
Also on the cards for further research at UNNC are:
• Exploring which types of paints can be used with the unique material;
• Studies to determine the long-term environmental impacts of the use of the materials; and
• Ways to improve the production of the material to enhance cost efficiency and ensure the process is environmentally-friendly.
The new material is called: novel non-deformed energy storage phase change material (PCM).
The scientists at the Centre for Sustainable Energy Technologies, meanwhile, are involved in various other projects aimed at finding ways to reduce the global carbon footprint emitted by the world’s buildings.
Professor Darkwa and Dr David Chow, who leads the Architectural Environment Engineering degree programme, have played a major role in work behind new building regulation laws in Ningbo, China. Building developers in the city are compelled to include at least one sustainable energy technology, among other steps, to reduce any environmental harm associated with construction.
China’s national government is on a major drive to improve the country’s environmental track record and the University’s scientists are increasingly involved in making recommendations to policy makers at the highest levels.
In October, UNNC will be the site of China’s second international symposium on low carbon buildings when scientists, researchers, government officials and practitioners will gather to present and discuss recent research outputs and demonstration projects.
Professor Nabil Gindy, Vice-Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at UNNC, said: “The University’s strategic investment in research infrastructure to facilitate the advancement of knowledge in sustainable energy technologies is reaping rewards.
“We are very proud of the research excellence of this particular team of scientists, who have proven to be world-class specialists in the field of sustainable energy technologies. The University of Nottingham has a longstanding commitment to the global environmental agenda,” he said.
The University’s cutting-edge research feeds into all teaching programmes and PhD students, like Mr Zhou, also get the opportunity to make valuable contributions to the advancement of science, he noted.
Professor Gindy said: “Vital for our scientific progress here, too, is the huge support we receive from the Ningbo city authorities, who also recognise the importance of minimising environmental harm and placing sustainability at the forefront of all endeavours.
“We are, of course, also grateful for assistance from our research collaborators at other universities and in the private sector,” he said.
The full cost of the research entailed in developing the new building material has not been disclosed. However, it was made possible through various grants, including from the Ningbo government, KK Chung Educational Group, Hong Kong-based Sustainable Sourcing Ltd and China’s Suntech Ltd.
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Mike Jonas says:
August 4, 2011 at 5:55 am
“They are even attacking agriculture now, seeing global dangers in cow farts, of all things. They don’t seem to understand that today’s cow farts are tomorrow’s essentials. Every time you tuck into bacon and eggs, for instance, part of it has passed through a cow fart.”
Actually the greenhouse gas comes out the other end. Cows don’t fart much but they belch constantly eating high celluose foods like grass. Methane comes out in the belch. The methane is produced by a bacteria in the fore-stomach of ruminants. If that bacteria weren’t there they would not be able to digest grass, hay, and alfalfa. The amount of methane ruminant livestock produce is directly related to what you feed them. Higher nutrition foods produce little and low nutrient foods produce a lot.
Good example of urban myth that cows fart more than the next guy (pound for pound of course). All farts are primarily methane to the delight of juvenile male humans who are sometimes known to ignite their own emissions for the enternment value. I looked about and it seems to be a common misconception. Probably just because it sounds cooler to say “fart” in a Beevis and Butthead sort of way. I guess if you don’t ignite farts the next best thing is to find justifiable opportunities to say the word.
So all animals with a large intestine generate methane which exits posterior. The difference between you and the cow that makes the cow produce more methane is the cow has a fore-stomach populated with bacteria that can break down cellulose. Most of the methane they emit is produced in the fore-stomach (also called the rumen) and comes back up in a belch just like the predigested cellulose is regugitated for a second chew to make it back into a slurry and introduce fresh digestive enzymes resident in saliva.
What’s more interesting than cow farts is cow spit. A single cow eating a high cellulose diet can produce over 10 gallons of saliva each day. Most of gets recycled. It’s produced while they chew in copious amounts (both raw food and cud), swallowed, and reabsorbed in the rumen. That’s a helluvalotta cow spit.
Jeff Carlson says:
August 4, 2011 at 9:34 am
“explain to me where the heat absorbed by this new insulation will go ?”
They talk about a high heat capacity so I presume one of its primary properties is high thermal inertia and low mass. In other words it has the thermal inertia of a cinderblock only with far less total mass and volume.
The other key property appears to be thermal mass that varies with temperature.
So in effect it does the same thing as opening your windows on a warm day to let the walls, floors, and ceilings soak up the heat then closing those windows at night to retain the heat. Or doing the opposite to cool the house at night by opening windows and closing them during the day.
This material, near as I can tell, does the same as opening and closing windows at appropriate times to reduce heating and cooling requirements. Only this stuff does it without actually any air so humidity remains unchanged which may be a problem when the outside air is too dry or moist for best comfort.
Chuckarama said:
August 4, 2011 at 9:16 am
“Wait. Did I miss something? There’s a Chinese Patent authority? And they care about who owns rights to something potentially valuable?”
It would depend on who invented the product…if the chinese invented something, they will do anything to protect it, if you invent something, so solly….
SimonJ says:
August 4, 2011 at 4:28 am
It’s greener than fossil firewood. Probably more BTUs/joules too. 🙂
Perhaps a good analogy for this phase change materials are rechargeable batteries. They charge by storing heat, they discharge by releasing heat. At partial charge they have a certain temperature (voltage) which falls off when they’re discharged. Their overcharge response is to just stop absorbing heat as phase change and their temperature climbs. (That’s a better overcharge performance than what real batteries exhibit.)
One issue I have is the lack of an on/off switch. A lot of the heat could be wasted overnight when peole are asleep..
Occasionally architects have incorporated a swimming pool in to designs for office blocks. The air conditioning would heat the pool through summer and extract it during winter. I think some self build people have also had a large pool in their basement and done the same thing. I am not sure how effective this is in reducing fuel demand, or what issues could be caused by the moisture, but it does sound a more fun method. And it has an on/off switch!
All this and nary a mention of geoengineering. I guess we can add white coloring and spray Kilimanjaro with the stuff. Or green it up and use it like Astroturf. That should cool Texas off. Or maybe build a wall of it to keep Cold air from Canuckistan from mixing with all that humidity from the overheated GOM. But we should be reminded that in so doing, we’ll have to stop burning coal in China, because its special ingredients are causing cooling already. Whatever works. Not warming? Release some of that heat, then. Cooling too much? Now that’s a problem we haven’t addressed. Cheap to manufacture? Not if the IPCC gets a claw under one edge. Like the data, they cherrypick the patent as well.
Sigh.
I wonder if fire breathing dragon legend began with some juvenile human male discovering that he could ignite cow burps to much more spectacular effect than igniting his own comparatively puny emissions…
Haven’t Aleuts built their houses with phase-changing wall materials for thousands of years, keeping temperatures at a constant 32F?
PCMs (phase change materials) do not violate any thermodynamic laws. For the purposes discussed in this post, wax is a type of PCM. Waxes can be obtained that will melt at just about any temperature up to several hundred degrees F. Heat at a higher temperature outside the wall is absorbed by the wall and then is transferred into the house by both thermal radiation and convection into the air. Heat flows from hot to cold, thus complying with the Second Law.
With a wall that contains PCM, the incoming heat is absorbed by the PCM so that the PCM melts. The melting is a constant-temperature process as the PCM changes from a solid to a liquid. In the BASF material, the PCM is contained in tiny plastic spheres and imbedded in the drywall. Because the PCM is melting, very little heat is transferred into the interior of the house. If there is sufficient PCM in the wall, the sun goes down before all the PCM melts, and the outdoor temperature drops. The PCM then begins to solidify, and transfers heat in the other direction, back to the ambient air outside the home.
There is no magic to any of this, it has been known for a very long time. The issues are cost to benefit ratio, long-term stability of the PCM, environmental issues if and when the PCM leaks into the wall material. With energy costs low, the benefit from using PCM is likely not worth the extra cost. Where electric power prices are rapidly escalating – due to renewable energy mandates or new nuclear power plants – it is likely that PCM wallboard will enjoy more use.
To the commenter that wrote the BASF product is not commercially available, that turns out not to be the case. see http://www.thermalcore.info/product-info.htm
Ah, yes, what is old is now new again.
In the late 1970’s I did a summer as a intern at an “Institute for Energy Conservation” associated with a well known university on the east coast of ths USA. They were working on solar cells that would be so cheap people could use them as roofing shingles. (ok that one didn’t work out so well, but it sure sounded GOOD).
They also were working on phase change materials (wax) that could be installed in the walls of a building. As the wall started to heat up the wax would melt and absorb a bunch of energy thus keeping the wall cool. Later in the day the wax would solidify as the wall cooled back down.
They even had prototypes using the sausage packaging technology of the day. Have you seen the sausages packed in plastic tubes with metal staples/clips on the ends ? Jimmy Dean anyone ?
Old idea, same old problems; cost/stabilty/toxicity of the raw materials, leakage of the packaging, training of the installers, etc. etc.
At the time we had a president telling us we were going to run out of “fossil” fuels in a decade.
Then the next president deregulated interstate commerce in natural gas and all of a sudden we had lots of it……….. And now we have even more……… Unless somebody stops us from using it.
Cheers, Kevin.
I’ve seen heat figures of 22 BTU/sq.ft a being the phase change in gypsum panels with Micronal beads. Not having a gut feel for what a BTU is, I have to do calculations and those say it’s something like 250 kJ/m^2. Direct sunlight could provide that much energy in less than half an hour.
As for energy stored in the phase change, that energy must be allowed to be removed so the room has to get colder than the phase-change temperature. Else further heat input will result in a simple elevation of surface temperature, dependent upon the specific heat of the panel; and the temperature conditions on the other side of the surface.
Bernd Felsche:
Micronal beads don’t cut it. Hundreds of kilograms of wax (or similar substance) in each outside wall is needed. Wax at about 200–220 kJ/kg heat of fusion, will require a lot of mass to make effective constant inside temperature control. There is plenty of room between studs for such quantity, but at a buck a pound, costs could get quite high and I don’t even want to contemplate the fire hazard. New materials and techniques, however may overcome some of these problems. GK
The PCM is not subjected to the full heat of the sun. There are layers of insulation also in the wall.
Mike Jonas says:
August 4, 2011 at 1:10 am
Well done there Mike. I wouldn’t have been able to lay the bricks nicely. Also no framework and very little timber used. Considering the amount of concrete used this house build method is NOT green. But the thermal mass of internal concrete which is entirely insulated from the outside world makes for a very stable internal temperature. The upside is my annual heating bills are most reasonable. Belated thought, adobe may not be a suitable material in the UK. Rains a lot. 🙂
I bet the material is lead. China is always looking for uses for it.
“I bet the material is lead.”
I read the label on the “lead free” plumbing solder the other day. Instead of lead, they use antimony.
From wikipedia: “the effects of antimony poisoning are similar to arsenic poisoning.”
Both are toxic, but only lead is regulated. Well, that is certainly a relief…