High-Performance Thermal Insulation for Building Envelope Construction

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In recent times, concerns over global warming and climate change have been influencing every aspect of our day-to-day activities, and built environment is no exception. Buildings consume up to about 40% of our total national energy demand and Canada has one of the highest per-capita energy consumption in the world. The most cost-effective way to enhance the energy efficiency of built environment is the addition of thermal insulation in exterior building envelopes. Quite naturally, the newly updated National Energy Code of Canada for Buildings (NECB) and various green building rating systems (LEED, Net-Zero etc.) are promoting increased use of thermal insulations in exterior building envelope constructions. Consequently these developments are providing fresh impetus to the research on high-performance and environment-friendly thermal insulations. The principle goals of this research program are to develop and integrate environment-friendly high-performance thermal insulations in Canadian building envelope constructions. The primary focus of the first five years of this research program will be on the vacuum technology based vacuum insulation panel (VIP) and nanoporous aerogel insulation. Aerogel based thermal insulations have about two times and VIPs have about five to ten times higher thermal resistivity than closed-cell foam insulation. There are four major tasks that will be carried out during the next five years and they are: (1) development of alternative low-cost core materials for VIPs, (2) development of bio-based VIPs from renewable bio-resources, (3) determination of long-term performance of VIPs, and (4) assessment and management of hygrothermal (i.e. moisture and thermal) performance of novel and highly insulated building envelopes. The research direction of this program is motivated by my involvement with several national and international organizations/associations (ULC, SCC, ISO, ASTM, IEA-EBC etc.).The outcomes from this research program will have profound impacts on both Canadians and Canadian construction industry. The outcomes will help Canadians to build more energy efficient buildings, reduce housing and heating costs, and mitigate the elements causing climate change, and also provide inexpensive, environment-friendly and high-performance thermal insulation technologies to the Canadian construction industry.