Energy Efficient Cement-Based Building Materials

Energy plays a key role in the technological, industrial, economical and societal development. The energy-intensive building construction sector accounts for approximately 42% of the total EU final energy consumption and is responsible for approximately 36% of EU CO2 emissions. The building construction sector is considered to be the one with the biggest cost effective energy-saving potential impact. Consequently, there is a strong need for implementing: i) Quick low-cost energy efficient retrofitting solutions to adapt the non-efficient residential European building stock to present energy regulation and ii) Low-cost & low-energy new buildings in line with the "nearly zero energy buildings" standards. The building envelope is the key element to address, in a building, in order to achieve the best improvements in terms of energy efficiency while maintaining the indoor environment quality. Therefore, the development of new lightweight materials and components for the building envelope with outstanding properties is terms of high thermal performance is a must that is being addressed in this work. These new materials and components will not only reduce considerably the heating and cooling demands but will maintain the indoor comfort of the buildings. The general objective of this work is to design and synthesize high thermal insulating cement-based products by incorporation of superinsulating aerogel-like materials. The develop materials will be lightweight, with a low value for the thermal conductivity while maintaining their mechanical properties.