Experimental and CFD Investigation on the Application for Aerogel Insulation in Buildings

Santu Golder,Ramadas Narayanan,Mohammad Rofiqul Islam,Md Rashed Hossain

doi:10.3390/en14113310

Santu Golder, Ramadas Narayanan + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/en14113310

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Abstract

Reducing building energy consumption is a significant challenge and is one of the most important research areas worldwide. Insulation will help to keep the building’s desired temperature by reducing the heat flow. Additionally, proper insulation can provide an extended period of comfort, leading to reduced building energy requirements. Encapsulated air is the major aspect of most thermal insulation materials. Low thermal conductivity is a good characteristic of thermal insulation materials. Aerogel has low thermal conductivity, so it is suitable for glazing and insulation purposes. This research paper investigates the effectiveness of aerogel as an insulation material in buildings by incorporating a translucent aerogel-glazing system in the window and aerogel insulation in the wall of a building. Experimental investigation of a 10 mm thick aerogel blanket surrounded box was conducted to assess its performance. Additionally, a CFD simulation was conducted, and the results of temperature degradation for the wall showed good agreement with experimental results. Additionally, the CFD simulation of temperature decay was compared between the aerogel-glazed window and argon-glazed window. It was found that the aerogel-glazed window has slower temperature decay compared to the argon-glazed window. The results showed that integrating aerogel in the glazing system and wall insulation in a building has the potential to reduce the building’s energy consumption. Moreover, a numeric simulation was conducted, and showed that the building’s annual energy consumption is reduced by 6% with the use of aerogel insulation compared to fiberglass.

Highlights

Energy saving in the building is an important issue globally as building energy consumption is increasing rapidly because of increased demand for indoor comfort
This paper investigated the suitability of aerogel for the application in glazing systems and wall insulation
The temperature decay simulation was compared among the rooms made of the aerogel-glazed window with an aerogel-insulated wall, fiberglass-insulated wall of a room with an argon-glazed window, argon-glazed window with an aerogel-insulated wall, and the uninsulated room along with an argon-glazed window

Summary

Introduction

Energy saving in the building is an important issue globally as building energy consumption is increasing rapidly because of increased demand for indoor comfort. Aerogel is a promising new insulation material for building applications because of its low thermal conductivity. The integration of aerogel insulation in the PCM (phasechange material) glass window is worthy technology This technique solves the application of PCM technology in windows effectively by exploiting the window latent heat in the cold climate condition in China. Aerogel glazing can bring up to 57% reduction in heat gains for windows, and it reduces 8.5% cooling energy consumption of the building. An et al developed aerogel insulation material with a thermal conductivity and density of 0.0224 W m−1 K−1, 0.05 g cm−3, respectively [25]. A comprehensive CFD model was developed to represent a room with aerogel insulation This model is validated by conducting an experimental investigation and comparing the experimental results with the model. The whole building simulation was carried out using the EnergyPlus model, which predicated the annual energy saving for a typical building with aerogel insulation

Properties of Aerogel

Auxiliary Equations for Radiation

Model Details and Boundary Conditions

Experiment and Simulation Results for the Aerogel Blanket Surrounded Box

Findings

Conclusions