Iea ebc energy in Buildings and Community Proposal for a new iea ecbcs‐Annex

5: Durability/Ageing/Weathering

Task leaders: VAQTEC – CHALMERS - CABOT

Durability can be defined as the assurance or probability that a material will have a relatively long continuous useful life, without requiring an inordinate degree of maintenance. Durability is generally quantified by a time of failure, generally given in year.

Ageing is used to describe degradation process, generally using laboratory equipment’s such as climatic chambers (temperature & humidity, UV) or mechanical systems for creeping.

Weathering describes more or less a natural degradation due to weather conditions. The well-known challenge is to link artificial ageing and natural weathering.

The objective of ageing testing would be to understand potential degradation processes that could occur. SIM can offer considerable advantages; however potential drawback effects should be known and considered in the planning process in order to optimise the development of these extraordinary properties and to prevent negative publicity which could be detrimental to this sector of emerging products.

From Task 3, the conditions in use (temperature, moisture, pressure, load …) will be well-known for a set of applications. Using these inputs, ageing conditions will be defined and testing will be carried out. Then, selected characteristics (thermal conductivity, pressure …) or performance (U-value …) will be measured at different steps of the ageing test.

5.1: Materials scale

Ageing tests and the investigated physical characteristics will be defined. It’s expected that some tests will be similar for all SIM but specific tests should be also developed.

Physical models to describe the degradation processes will be developed. These models will investigate several topics such as:

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  Better understand the aging mechanisms of SIM in severe conditions: high temperature and/or high humidity thermal gradients or cycling conditions.
  
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  Evaluation of condensation and freezing risks for SIM: Modeling of risky situations, determination of technical assembling to avoid identified risks.
  
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  …
  

5.2: Component scale

Larger scale ageing tests and the investigated performance (Uvalue …) will be defined.

From results obtained at the materials scale, simplified models will be developed for modelling the long term behaviour of building components & systems.

6 - Benefit-Risk Balance

Task leader: EMPA, Oxford Brooks University, Brunel University

The goal of this task is to assess the benefits (e.g. functionality, durability, environmental performance) and risks (human health and environmental risks) of new products/materials in comparison with the conventional products/materials.

This task will be based on the development of a structured life cycle approach for VIPs, GFP & ABP and the conventional competitive products in relevant application fields.

LCA addresses the environmental aspects and potential environmental impacts (e.g. use of resources and environmental consequences of releases) throughout a product's life cycle from raw material acquisition through production, use, end-of life treatment, recycling and final disposal (i.e. cradle-to-grave).

6.1: Qualitative Life Cycle

While full LCAs can be intensively data-driven, sometimes a qualitative assessment is all that is required. This is often called a Qualitative LCA. Such evaluations can be used as stand-alone decision tools, but often they serve to identify the design options worth more detailed analysis. Evaluations can be text-based or scored, but there are no standard axes or rating systems so organizations can adopt whatever metrics work for their purposes. Qualitative impact assessments tend to be quicker, less expensive, and easier for non-specialists to participate in and understand than quantitative ones. Their lack of precision can be acceptable for many high-level decisions, or for indicating when it is worth investing the time and effort required to generate a more detailed understanding of the environmental impacts that many quantitative methods can provide.

6.2: Data Elaboration

LCA is based on input data which are generally collected from industry. In the present annex, the industrial participants will provide data to the research centred in charge of the LCA.

6.2.1: LCI (Life Cycle Inventory)

LCI is the data collection portion of LCA. LCI is the straight-forward accounting of everything involved in the “system” of interest. It consists of detailed tracking of all the flows in and out of the product system, including raw resources or materials, energy by type, water, and emissions to air, water and land by specific substance. This kind of analysis can be extremely complex and may involve dozens of individual unit processes in a supply chain (e.g., the extraction of raw resources, various primary and secondary production processes, transportation, etc.) as well as hundreds of tracked substances.

6.2.2: EHS (Environment, Health & Safety issues)

Most of traditional insulating materials are made with chemical products which could have some Environment, Health & Safety issues. For example, foam insulation often uses hazardous chemicals with high human toxicity, such as isocyanates, benzene and toluene. Fiberglass is energy intensive in manufacture and fibers are bound into batts using adhesive binders, which can contain phenol formaldehyde. Cellulose, considered as a “natural material” made with 75–85% of recycled newsprint, is often treated with flame retardant (boric acid) and insect repellent. Therefore, with new technologies, one should consider the potential unintended consequences to human health and the environment that might accompany development and use of the technology.

6.3 – LCA (Life Cycle Assessment)

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a multi-step procedure for calculating the lifetime environmental impact of a product or service. The process is naturally iterative as the quality and completeness of information and its plausibility is constantly being tested. There are various methods globally for categorizing and characterizing the life cycle impact of the flows to and from the environment, which can somewhat complicate the comparability of different LCA studies.

6.4: Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is a process through which new materials are evaluated for their ability to cause unanticipated harm to humans and the environment. This evaluation is based on scientific data that measures the magnitude of the harm an individual might experience based on the size of the exposure and the biological response to that exposure. This evaluation will be done for SIM.

6.5: LCC (Life Cycle Costing)

LCI and LCA should not be confused with “life cycle costing”. LCC is another life cycle approach but it looks at the direct monetary costs involved with a product or service and not environmental impact.

LCC looks at the direct monetary costs involved with a product or service and not environmental impact. For example, today’s vacuum insulation panels (VIP) are relatively costly. Nevertheless, application of VIPs may actually be directly profitable compared to traditional thermal insulation. This potential profit is due to the very low thermal conductivity values of VIPs (e.g. compared to traditional insulating materials) which make it possible to build considerably slimmer wall constructions. The higher the market value of living area (EUR/m2 living area) the higher the potential profit is by the application of VIPs and reduction of the wall thickness which hence increases the living area.

6.6: Integration of EHS in LCA and link to LCC

This is the final goal in order to provide understandable information to users and decision makers.

A whole-system life cycle analysis of SIM will be carried out combining embodied energy investments and operational energy savings.