Recovery Act. Advanced Building Insulation by the CO2 Foaming Process
Abstract
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.
- Authors:
-
- Industrial Science and Technology Network, Inc., Lancaster, PA (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Industrial Science and Technology Network, Inc., Lancaster, PA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1248531
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-ISTN-0003983-1
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0003983
- Resource Type:
- Technical Report
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION; 36 MATERIALS SCIENCE; Insulation; building insulation; XPS; energy efficiency; building envelope; nanomaterials
Citation Formats
Yang, Arthur. Recovery Act. Advanced Building Insulation by the CO2 Foaming Process. United States: N. p., 2013.
Web. doi:10.2172/1248531.
Yang, Arthur. Recovery Act. Advanced Building Insulation by the CO2 Foaming Process. United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/1248531
Yang, Arthur. 2013.
"Recovery Act. Advanced Building Insulation by the CO2 Foaming Process". United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/1248531. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1248531.
@article{osti_1248531,
title = {Recovery Act. Advanced Building Insulation by the CO2 Foaming Process},
author = {Yang, Arthur},
abstractNote = {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.},
doi = {10.2172/1248531},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1248531},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Dec 30 00:00:00 EST 2013},
month = {Mon Dec 30 00:00:00 EST 2013}
}