Life Cycle Assessment of Innovative Materials for Thermal Energy Storage in Buildings

Horn, Rafael; Burr, Matthias; Fröhlich, Dominik; Gschwander, Stefan; Held, Michael; Lindner, Jan Paul; Munz, Gunther; Nienborg, Björn; Schossig, Peter

doi:10.1016/j.procir.2017.11.095

Cited by 28 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Almost all data on environmental impacts of materials and processes considered in the assessment were based on datasets available in ecoinvent database in the software. The exception is data on the evaluated Rubitherm SP25 PCM, which were based on a recently published research paper [Horn, 2018]. Utilization of this data also limited the impact categories: [Horn, 2018] shows environmental impacts of the PCM in Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Primary Energy (PE).…”

Section: Environmental Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

PCMS in Buildings: Compatibility With Container Materials and Analysis of Environmental Impacts

Struhala¹,

Bantová²,

Ostrý³

2020

Proceedings of the enviBUILD 2019

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Contemporary architecture emphasizes energy efficiency and utilization of renewable energy sources. Main issues connected with these sources are instability of the energy supply and temporal mismatch between energy demand and supply. The solution for both these issues is suitable energy storage technology. This creates opportunity for utilization of latent heat storage (LHS) in phase change materials (PCMs). LHS technologies are already in use for example in solar thermal collectors. However their wider application is limited by lack of credible information on the properties of PCMs and their interactions with other materials. The aim of this paper is to reduce the lack of knowledge in this field. It presents results of long-term experiment evaluating the compatibility of selected organic and inorganic PCMs and metals (possible container materials). This experiment tried to find suitable material pairs that would ensure flawless functionality of the LHS system without corrosion, leakage or other defects. The experiment was followed by evaluation of the environmental impacts of hypothetical application of the tested materials. The results of this environmental assessment were also compared with a reference case representing traditional heat storage options to provide further insight regarding suitability of real-life applications of the tested materials. The results indicate that stainless steel is the most stable of the tested metals, which makes it most suitable PCM containers. However the environmental assessment suggests otherwise. Environmental impacts of the evaluated steel-PCM combinations are the highest. In fact all evaluated metal-PCM combinations have higher environmental impacts than the reference case. This discourages their application in sustainable construction industry.

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Section: Environmental Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

PCMS in Buildings: Compatibility With Container Materials and Analysis of Environmental Impacts

Struhala¹,

Bantová²,

Ostrý³

2020

Proceedings of the enviBUILD 2019

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“…One study on facades was identified as relevant due to the use of dynamic simulations to investigate the operational impacts [65]. On a material level, LCA studies on adaptive materials appeared to be mostly missing; available information was found exclusively on materials for thermal energy storage [67][68][69].…”

Section: Background Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Corrosive in contact with metal, slightly toxic [92]. Significantly lower contributions to the global warming potential than fossil-based PCMs [68].…”

Section: Salt Hydratesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Re-use of AM materials and parts depends on the usage life of the material, or how many change cycles it can achieve before exhausting the adaptive capacity or showing signs of wear. These materials being very new, their usage life is for most of them not proved through experience, but in the best case hypothesized through lab-testing [68,69,93].…”

Section: C1-c4 End Of Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

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Review and Mapping of Parameters for the Early Stage Design of Adaptive Building Technologies through Life Cycle Assessment Tools

2019

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Adaptive Building Technologies have opened up a growing field of architectural research aimed at improving the overall building performance, ensuring comfort while reducing operational energy consumption. Focusing on flexibility over short timeframes, these new technologies are however rarely designed within the broader frame of sustainability over their entire lifecycle. How sustainable these zero energy technologies really are is yet to be established. The purpose of the research is to develop a flexible easy-to-use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool to support creative innovation and sustainable design choices in the early concept and design stages of Adaptive Building Technologies. This paper reports on the results of the first step of the research, providing a mapping in terms of structure and contents of the parameters involved in the design of these technologies. Addressed from a holistic point of view, the elements of the system were defined though a qualitative approach: relevant parameters were collected through document analysis, reviewing the state-of-the-art technology through online databases as ScienceDirect, Scopus, MDPI, ResearchGate, and organized according to hierarchy and relevance in the different life cycle stages. As a result, the paper identifies (1) relevant parameters defining the design of Adaptive Building Technologies; (2) materials, processes and concepts specific to the design of these technologies, as compared to conventional building technologies; (3) issues and knowledge gaps to enable successive research phases; (4) specific actions in each life cycle stage for designers and producers to optimize the design of the technology. The mapping graphically and hierarchically organizes the elements of the system within a flexible structure to be implemented and integrated over time, as the technology evolves, to support parametric design and enable alternative design concepts to arise within a cradle-to-cradle perspective.

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“…Horn et al evaluated the energetic amortization of pure sorption materials, ignoring any required auxiliary parts or energy, for an assumed solar thermal application (100 • C desorption, 35 • C adsorption, and 10 • C condensation/evaporation temperature, respectively). Under these boundary conditions, silica gel and Z13X requires~60 and~260 cycles, respectively, to supply the energy consumed during their production [17]. Bertsch compared the LCA of solar thermal systems with water and open sorption storages.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Closed Adsorption Heat Storage—A Life Cycle Assessment on Material and Component Levels

et al. 2018

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Closed adsorption storages have been investigated in several projects for heat storage in building applications with focus on energy density and performance. This study complements this research with the assessment of the environmental impacts over the life cycle. Global warming potential (GWP) was chosen as the assessment criterion. Selected sorption materials in combination with water as the refrigerant were analyzed first by themselves and then embedded in a generic storage configuration. Sensible storage in water served as the reference benchmark. Results on material and component level showed that the relative storage capacity compared to water under realistic operating conditions reached values of below 4 and 2.5, respectively, in the best cases. Since the effort for producing the sorbents as well as the auxiliary material demand for assembling storage components was significantly higher than in the reference case, the specific environmental impact per storage capacity also turned out to be ~2.5 to ~100 times higher. We therefore suggest focusing sorption storage research on applications that (a) maximize the utilization of the uptake of sorbents, (b) do not compete with water storages, and (c) require minimal auxiliary parts.

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Life Cycle Assessment of Innovative Materials for Thermal Energy Storage in Buildings

Cited by 28 publications

References 7 publications

PCMS in Buildings: Compatibility With Container Materials and Analysis of Environmental Impacts

PCMS in Buildings: Compatibility With Container Materials and Analysis of Environmental Impacts

Review and Mapping of Parameters for the Early Stage Design of Adaptive Building Technologies through Life Cycle Assessment Tools

Closed Adsorption Heat Storage—A Life Cycle Assessment on Material and Component Levels

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