Recovery Act. Advanced Building Insulation by the CO2 Foaming Process

Yang, Arthur¹ 

[1] Industrial Science and Technology Network, Inc., Lancaster, PA (United States)

关键词: Insulation;    building insulation;    XPS;    energy efficiency;    building envelope;    nanomaterials;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1248531
RP-ID  :  DOE-ISTN--0003983-1
PID  :  OSTI ID: 1248531

美国|英语

来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

In this project, ISTN proposed to develop a new "3rd" generation of insulation technology. The focus was a cost-effective foaming process that could be used to manufacture XPS and other extruded polymer foams using environmentally clean blowing agents, and ultimately achieve higher R-values than existing products while maintaining the same level of cost-efficiency. In the U.S., state-of-the-art products are primarily manufactured by two companies: Dow and Owens Corning. These products (i.e., STYROFOAM and FOAMULAR) have a starting thermal resistance of R-5.0/inch, which declines over the life of the product as the HFC blowing agents essential to high R-value exchange with air in the environment. In the existing technologies, the substitution of CO2 for HFCs as the primary foaming agent results in a much lower starting R-value, as evidenced in CO2-foamed varieties of XPS in Europe with R-4.2/inch insulation value. The major overarching achievement from this project was ISTN's development of a new process that uses CO2 as a clean blowing agent to achieve up to R-5.2/inch at the manufacturing scale, with a production cost on a per unit basis that is less than the cost of Dow and Owens Corning XPS products.