Monolithic pectin aerogels, aeropectins, were prepared via dissolution-gelation-coagulation and subsequent drying with supercritical CO2. Aeropectin had pore sizes that varied from mesopores to small macropores and compression moduli in the range from 4 to 18 MPa. Aeropectins show plastic deformation up to 60% strain before the pore walls collapse. Pectin aerogels have a thermal conductivity below that of air in ambient conditions, making them new thermal superinsulating fully biomass-based materials. The contribution of gas and solid conduction plus radiative heat transfer were determined and discussed.

Light envelopes are more and more frequently used in modern buildings but they do not present sufficient thermal inertia. A solution to increase this inertia is to incorporate a phase change material (PCM) in this envelope. This paper presents the performance of a test-cell with a new structure of light wallboards containing PCMs submitted to climatic variation and a comparison is made with a test-cell without PCMs. To improve the wallboard efficiency a vacuum insulation panel (VIP) was associated to the PCM panel. This new structure allows the apparent heat capacity of the building to be increased, the solar energy transmitted by windows to be stored without raising the indoor cell temperature, and the thickness of the wallboard to be decreased compared with that of traditional wallboards. An experimental study was carried out by measuring temperature and heat fluxes on and through the wallboards. The indoor temperature, which has a special importance for occupants, was also measured. A numerical simulation with the TRNSYS software was carried out in adding a new module representing the new wallboard. It showed a good agreement with experimental results. This new tool will allow users to simulate the thermal behaviour of buildings having walls with PCMs.

With advances in x-ray microtomography, it is now possible to obtain three-dimensional representations of a material’s microstructure with a voxel size of less than one micrometer. The Visible Cement Data Set represents a collection of 3-D data sets obtained using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France in September 2000. Most of the images obtained are for hydrating portland cement pastes, with a few data sets representing hydrating Plaster of Paris and a common building brick. All of these data sets are being made available on the Visible Cement Data Set website at http://visiblecement.nist.gov. The website includes the raw 3-D datafiles, a description of the material imaged for each data set, example two-dimensional images and visualizations for each data set, and a collection of C language computer programs that will be of use in processing and analyzing the 3-D microstructural images. This paper provides the details of the experiments performed at the ESRF, the analysis procedures utilized in obtaining the data set files, and a few representative example images for each of the three materials investigated.

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