ReviewVacuum insulation panel products: A state-of-the-art review and future research pathways
Introduction
The world today relies on a large amount of fossil fuels to produce energy. The continued use of fossil fuels will strain our resources, as well as lead to large amounts of pollution, especially through CO2 emissions. The heating and cooling of buildings require a considerable amount of energy. A reduction in energy usage for the building sector will have a beneficial effect on CO2 emissions. In the European Union buildings represent 40% of the total energy usage, and the existing building stock represents the single largest potential sector for energy savings [19]. By the principle of the Kyoto Pyramid, the most cost effective method of reducing energy usage is to provide better thermally insulated buildings.
To reach the demanded U-values with traditional insulation materials, buildings are required to have walls up to 50 cm thick. This leads to more complex building details and transportation of thicker materials to the building sites [28].
One of the most promising building insulation materials in its early stages of commercialization now, is vacuum insulation panels (VIP). VIPs have an insulation performance which normally ranges from 0.004 W/(mK) in pristine condition to typical 0.008 W/(mK) after 25 years of ageing. This is 5–10 times better, depending on ageing, than traditional insulation used in buildings today [28]. Therefore, VIPs enable highly insulated constructions for walls, roofs and floors, especially within refurbishing of older buildings where space is often limited. Integrating VIPs successfully into constructions requires careful planning with regard to its durability, the lack of flexibility, thermal bridging and lifetime expectations [60].
Especially the uncertainties around expected lifetime is a crucial factor for scepticism concerning VIPs. Research is being conducted on determining ways of interpreting in situ measurements and conduct reliable accelerated ageing tests. The need to better understand the mechanisms of ageing and general loss of thermal resistance over time has been mentioned by Simmler and Brunner [57] and Baetens et al. [5]. Various forms of accelerated climate ageing tests have been described by Wegger et al. [69]. Quality assurance of VIPs is an important factor to promote the use of VIPs the building sector. It is important to be able to differentiate between panel damage as a consequence of production errors, and damages caused by ageing and service failure, which hence will help the technology improve further [13].
The objective of this study is to present an overview of the different VIP producers and products, and to evaluate the effect and durability of these products. Furthermore, it is important to know how VIPs are tested with respect to lifetime performance in building applications. These investigations may help form guidelines for a new testing scheme and point to future research opportunities. That is, this state-of-the-art VIP review builds on already existing VIP reviews, e.g. by Alam et al. [1], Baetens et al. [5], Jelle [28], Johansson [35], Tenpierik [60] and Wang et al. [68], and is extending these further by collecting and focusing on a comprehensive review of existing VIP manufacturers and products, as well as discussing future research pathways for VIPs.
This work presents many tables with a lot of information, e.g. manufacturers, product names and various properties, both in the main text and in the appendices. Some of these properties are crucial to the performance of the VIPs. The tables provide the readers with valuable information concerning VIPs. Unfortunately, it is currently hard to obtain all the desired information from all the manufacturers. In general, many of the desired property values are not available on the manufacturers’ websites or other open information channels, which is hence seen as open spaces in the various tables. Hopefully, our addressing of these facts could act as an incentive for the manufacturers to state all the important properties of their products at their websites or other open information channels, and also as an incentive and reminder for the consumers and users to demand these values from the manufacturers.
Section snippets
General
A VIP consists of a porous core enveloped by an air and vapour tight barrier, which is heat sealed. The core is of an open pore structure to allow all the air to evacuate, and create a vacuum. The envelope needs to be air and vapour tight for the panel to uphold its thermally insulating properties over time. Fig. 1 shows a normal schematic of a VIP. The initial pristine thermal conductivity of the core is normally around 0.004 W/(mK), however increasing with elapsed time due to air and moisture
VIP products
Vacuum insulation panels (VIP) are most commonly used for shipping containers for temperature sensitive materials, domestic appliances like freezers, etc. However, for the last decade the most interesting aspect of VIPs has been their introduction to the building sector. In the following, a short explanation of the use of VIPs in appliances will be given. Thereafter, the use of VIPs in constructions up until today will be looked upon. Both laboratory experiments and in situ measurements will be
Other state-of-the-art insulation materials
Though VIPs show great promise as an insulation material for tomorrow, it is not the only one under development. Other interesting materials that may compete with VIPs in the future will be mentioned in the following chapters.
Conclusions
This study shows and presents a variety of vacuum insulation panel (VIP) manufacturers on the market today, offering a wide variety of VIP products. VIPs in general applications have already been used on the market for nearly two decades with success. For the construction sector there are still challenges to overcome. The lack of certified building systems and official approvals from governmental agencies are providing hurdles that will need to be handled. Education and further promotion of
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by the Research Council of Norway and several partners through The Research Centre on Zero Emission Buildings (ZEB).
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