Description
Human population is constantly growing, and with it, the consumption of energy which is provoking in recent times a severe shortage of fossil fuels. In particular, energy efficiency of buildings plays a preponderant role, being the core of multiple research projects around the globe. Within the European Union, half of the energy consumption is dedicated to heating and cooling in buildings and industry. It represents the main energy end-use sector. Considering the EU’s target of becoming carbon-neutral by the year 2050, the heating and cooling sector direly calls for major advances in energy efficiency, building sustainability and a cut back of fossil fuels consumption. Among the activities in this field of research, there is the endeavor of enriching cementitious foam with microencapsulated phase change materials (mPCM), in order to combine latent and sensible heat storage capacity in the building’s insulation layer, thereby, decreasing daily energy consumption for heating and cooling.
The work presents the results of static and dynamic measurements of concrete wall elements with an insulation layer of reference cementitious foam (without mPCM) and a foam concrete insulation including 10% and, respectively, 20% mPCM by paste volume. The measurements were carried out in a Hot Box Test Bench and temperatures were monitored both on the surfaces and in the intersections of the wall elements. The research was carried out in the frame of the NRG-STORAGE project (H2020).
