Recently, the aerogel-it team concluded the BIOVIPWALL open call project within the iClimabuilt project, funded by EC Horizon Europe were they investigated ultra-thin prefab concrete sandwich elements with bioaerogel VIP insulation!
The background
Prefab sandwich wall elements are interesting for both new construction as well as for serial renovation of existing buildings as they can be mass-produced in factories. This enables leveraging standardization and automatization for higher efficiency compared to local construction on the construction site.
But currently, almost exclusively steel-reinforced concrete is used which requires minimum thickness to protect the steel reinforcement from corrosion over time. The additional concrete leads to additional CO2 emissions during production and transportation.
Plus, the thermal insulation and the concrete layers consume valuable space.
The potential solutions that were investigated
1️⃣ With carbon-reinforced concrete (carbon concrete), the reinforcement no longer needs to be protected against corrosion. Therefore, the concrete layer can be reduced in thickness which saves space, material and transport cost, reducing CO2 footprint and reducing CO2 emissions for transportation (Of course, the CO2 emissions for the carbon reinforcement need to be considered).
2️⃣ Vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) are the highest-performing thermal insulation materials consuming the least space. The CO2 footprint of current VIPs is not particularly attractive however. Hence our new bioaerogels were tested as VIP core materials within the project.
The outcome
✅ Together with our project partner va-Q-tec and the iClimabuilt service providers, we developed and tested a new ultra-thin prefab sandwich wall system combining carbon concrete and VIPs containing bio-based aerogel.
✅ The overall wall thickness of the non-load-bearing showcase sandwich elements could be reduced to as little as 11 cm while retaining thermal insulation performance with a U value of 0.2 W/(m2*K)!
✅ Keeping recycling and repair in mind, the system was furthermore designed to be easy to disassemble.
✅ Based on our own calculations, we expect that a substantial CO2 footprint reduction is possible.
✅ Furthermore, we gained lots of highly valuable test results and learnings for material and systems optimization as well for the scale-up of our bioaerogel materials!
The partners
INEGI driving science & innovation
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Technische Universität Dresden



