Comparative life cycle assessment of different vacuum insulation panel core materials using a cradle to gate approach

Synthetic amorphous silica: environmental impacts of current industry and the benefit of biomass-derived silica

“…Finally, the dominance of silicon tetrachloride in the impact of dry SAS (also recently noted by Resalati et al 16 ) also has wider implications on the environmental impact that can be expected for SAS produced by the Stöber method 67 -which is used prolifically in academia. This is because the Stöber method uses organosilane precursors, which are derived from silicon tetrachloride.…”

“…Yet despite the development of LCA, gaps have emerged in the literature with regards to the LCA of SAS production methods. At the time of writing the author could find only two independent publications in which the environmental impact of mineralderived SAS (M-SAS) is evaluated via LCA 16,17 . However, to the best of the authors knowledge, only one publication investigates both wet and dry SAS production methods 17 .…”

Silica‐based core materials for thermal superinsulations in various applications

“…12 Insulation materials based on amorphous silica, such as fumed or precipitated silica, silica gel (silica xerogel), or sometimes even glass spheres can optimally meet these requirements. On the other hand, it is known from Resalati et al 13 that especially fumed silica has a very high environmental impact due to its energy-intensive production. Therefore, this work examines also alternative silica-based materials in more detail and, for the first time, recommendations are given for their product properties to be targeted for the various applications of superinsulations.…”

Comparative holistic assessment of using vacuum insulated panels for energy retrofit of office buildings

“…VIPs provide 5-8 times higher thermal resistance compared to conventional thermal insulation materials [2,3]. However, use of VIPs has been limited in the building sector due to their higher cost and carbon investment specifically in the case of fumed silica based VIPs [4,5,6], combined with the use of assessment methods which tend to focus only on energy costs and therefore favour cheaper traditional materials. VIPs when applied as internal insulation on walls can potentially lead to economic space savings.…”

“…The life cycle assessment (LCA) of VIPs have been mainly conducted in the context of Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) (available from the operators' websites including IBU, BRE and Norge) with results varying up to 200% [16]. Resalati et al [6] performed a full LCA analysis of VIPs considering different core materials, (as VIPs' main contributor to the environmental impact [17]), and have concluded that Pyrogenic silica, the most common core material for construction applications, had the highest environmental impact of the core materials considered. This, according to their study, suggests that measures such as recycling of the core material and more efficient manufacturing techniques should be considered if the material is to compete environmentally with the other alternative conventional materials.…”