Evaluation Model of Environmental Impacts of Insulation Building Envelopes

Abstract

Energy consumption during use is the focus of insulation envelope design, but the environmental impact of other stages in the entire life cycle of building envelopes should be of equal concern. In this paper, a model has been developed based on the life-cycle environmental assessment for calculating the environmental impacts of building envelopes. The model proposed will be useful to evaluate the environmental performance of various envelopes to optimize the design of energy-saving envelopes. Consequently, lots of experiments are conducted for environmental impact assessment and analysis for external windows and filler walls with energy-savings in heating areas of China. Four conclusions can be drawn from the analysis. (1) K of building envelope is the design parameter of the greatest impact on environmental performance and has a critical value, which is the value that has the smallest environmental impact over the entire life cycle. (2) The importance of the environmental impact of the building envelope during the life cycle stages is as follows: usage > production > transportation > disposal > construction. The construction process of the thermal insulation wall could be negligible. (3) The choice of regional building materials should consider the distance of transportation, which may be the key factor determining its life cycle environmental performance. (4) Aerated concrete EPS walls and wooden windows are the first choices for envelope construction from the environmental impact throughout the life cycle.

Sound-Absorption Coefficient of Bark-Based Insulation Panels

“…The planks of birch bark were used for a hundred years as sound absorbers under turf roofs in Sweden, serving also as waterproof membrane [23]. Natural materials such as bark, jute, flax, kenaf, hemp, coir fiber, wood, wool, coconut, straw, cane and corn husk can be designed as thermal and sound absorbers with the advantage of availability [24][25][26][27], sustainability [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] and biodegrability [36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

Assessment of Energy, Environmental and Economic Costs of Buildings’ Thermal Insulation–Influence of Type of Use and Climate

“…The methodologies used to identify the best thermal insulation material, its better position in the building opaque envelope, and its optimal thickness are normally based on a life cycle energy analysis (LCEA), a life cycle impact analysis (LCIA), and a life cycle cost analysis (LCCA), depending on whether the focus is on minimizing the energy consumption, the environmental impacts, or the economic costs, respectively [7][8][9][10][11][17][18][19][20][21]. As the relationship between the economic cost of buildings' thermal insulation and its energy efficiency and environmental impacts is not linear, there may be large differences between the solutions identified as the best, depending on the assessment methodology used [11,12,[17][18][19][20][21].…”

“…It was assumed that all buildings are built using the same type of passive construction solutions (opaque and glazed), and the opaque elements of the buildings' envelope are equipped with a traditional External Thermal Insulation Composite System (ETICS) [2,11,24,25,[28][29][30][31][32]. The three most common thermal insulation materials used in building construction are expanded polystyrene (EPS), extruded polystyrene (XPS), and mineral wool (MW) [20,21,30,33,34]. Thus, these are the insulating materials considered.…”

“…The thermal insulation materials most commonly used in building construction are expanded polystyrene (EPS), extruded polystyrene (XPS), and mineral wool (MW) [11,16,17,20,21,30,33]. The option for these materials is a result of their economic advantages, which is the first criterion used by the constructors and the owners of buildings.…”

Coupling Influence between Recycled Ceramics and Grazed Hollow Beads on Mechanical Properties and Thermal Conductivity of Recycled Thermal Insulation Concrete

“…In recent years, as a new type of lightweight aggregate, grazed hollow beads (GHB) have the characteristics of a porous inner surface and a glass-like outer surface, and have the function of a micro pump, which is easy to combine with cementitious materials. At the same time, the concrete prepared with GHB as lightweight aggregate has good mechanical and thermal insulation properties [ 16 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ]. However, the research on the mechanical properties, thermal conductivity and material properties of cement-based material systems prepared by combining GHB and ceramic coarse aggregates is insufficient, and it is still necessary to enrich the mechanism research of the basic material system to support its engineering applications.…”