HOMES Key INsulating material

Project Information

HOMESKIN

Grant agreement ID: 636709

DOI

10.3030/636709

Project closed

EC signature date 11 November 2014

Start date 1 February 2015

End date 31 January 2018

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Advanced manufacturing and processing

Total cost

€ 6 291 529,38

EU contribution

€ 4 517 567,00

Coordinated by

PCAS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HOMESKIN (HOMES Key INsulating material)

Reporting period: 2016-08-01 to 2018-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

By boosting resource efficiency and reducing reliance on fuels and materials, the European Union will improve its supply’s security on raw materials. This will allow the EU's economy to be more resilient to future wavering of the global energy market. Insulation Renewable Materials (IRM) is therefore expected to be a high growth market particularly in the field of energy efficient building envelopes.

Indeed, buildings are currently responsible for 40% of the global energy consumption and 36% of the CO2 emissions in the European Union. By improving buildings’ energy efficiency, we could reduce the total EU energy consumption by 5% to 6% and lower CO2 emissions by about 5%.

In this context, the HOMESKIN project develops a new silica Advanced Aerogel-Based Composite (AABC). This material possess one of the lowest thermal conductivity of all insulation materials found in the market.
The proposed solution bring to the market new insulation technologies that do not only possess very high thermal insulation performance but also are thinner, lighter, non-flammable, and with lower CO2 and Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions. The new product developed can be applied to new buildings as well as old buildings’ retrofit applications.
The particularity of this new material is its adaptability to the three most important insulation systems, bringing super-isolation performance to indoor insulation systems, External Thermal Insulation Composite System (ETICS) and to roof insulation systems.

HOMESKIN have prepared the industrial roll-out of a leading key enabling technology for Europe which will bring an estimated value creation over 2,000 M€ annually. According to the latest estimates, the large industrial pilot for the manufacturing of the AABC materials (40 M€ CAPEX approximately) is expected to generate a 75 M€/year turnover and more than 100 M€/year of value over the value chain. Each million invested shall generate around 5 direct jobs in Europe.

To reach these outcomes, the consortium encompasses 10 specialized partners covering 5 countries. Large companies bring in the project the commercial & state-of-the-art materials and process. On the other hand, academic partners have been selected to drive jointly the research work in order to achieve performance tests and take part to the European certification. Finally, to bridge up the gap between materials, knowledge and industrial prototypes, an RTO has been selected to structure the consortium and to provide a multi-sites platform with complementary and flexible capacities.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

PCAS / ENERSENS helped by ARMINES and USTUTT for the performance characterisations and helped by PAREX, TROCELLEN and FLAG for the industrial applications, worked intensively on the selection of the AABC reinforcement. After several trials, the consortium succeed into the identification of the best material for the production of super-insulation panels.

This research for AABC reinforcement, adapted to the chemical process and application constraints, finally selected the perfect reinforcement. All the advanced analyses of this super-insulation material have been performed and showed realy high insulation performance (3 times higher than any standard insulation material), good acoustic performance, no emission of VOC, good mechanical properties allowing to use these panels for lot of application and to finish, a a stability to fire (Fire class reach : A2, s1, d0).

During the project, industrial partner like TROCELLEN and PAREX developped with this super-insulation material, insulation systems : one indoor insulation multi layer system and one External Thermal Insulation Composite System.
These two systems showed high performance concerning the energy efficiency of buildings. Energy consuption of building are really decrease thanks to these two systems. By exemple, with only 2cm of super-insulation panels, the product reduces the envelope’s thermal transmittance of more than 80% from 4.102W/(m²K) to 0.682W/(m²K) (results coming from measurment in building demonstration at CEA INES and at ARMINES).

In parallel of this advancement, consortium partners were actively implicated in the dissemination of the HOMESKIN project and on the final products and systems developed. The main achievements in terms of dissemination activities were to set-up a Project Identity, displayed on the HOMESKIN Website (http://homeskin.net/) edit a promotion video of HOMESKIN and present the project at scientific exhibition, policy exhibition like COP21 but also at fair trade like ECO-BUILD, BATIMAT and soon at BAU.

Concerning the certification and the standardisation, ITeC focused on the main European regulations and requirements affecting the insulation product itself (AABC insulation product) and the insulation systems. Now that the final AABC is identified, validation and assessment of the product will start soon to prepare the commercialisation of the products and systems.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Technologic progresses
Thanks to the important work of the consortium within the HOMESKIN project, progresses beyond the state of the art were achieved. To summarize all innovations, we highlight the technological advances in four facts:
• Development and scale up of AABC with a thermal conductivity of 0.015 W/(m.K) => Improvement by at least 30% of insulation properties creating one of the most performant insulation.
• AABC answering all the first requirements (chemical stability, AABC adapted to the manufacturing, adhesion, mechanical and thermal performances reached) for ETICS systems and indoor insulation systems at laboratory scale. Tests performed based on European standard were a success.
• Reduction of the process energy balance and the consummation of raw material for the production of AABC.
• Reduction by at least 30% of the embodied energy and CO2 at component level (will be also confirmed by the LCA analysis).
• Reduction by at least 15% of the total costs compared to previous materials.

Standards and certifications
Identification of relevant regulatory requirements at European scale and application of verification methods from the Assessment Plan in order to plan the European Assessment Document and the European Technical Assessment to reach the CE-marking and the Declaration Of Performance.

Socio-Economy
HOMESKIN is strengthening the competitiveness and growth of project partners by developing innovations related to the AABC materials.
If HOMESKIN solutions are adopted massively, one can expect that 15% of the total building renovations fleet would be equipped by this technology and 10% of new buildings insulation. If 1% of the whole European park (160 million of buildings) is renovated each year, it will represent 20 million m²/year. The multiple advantages of the solution could enable a renovation’s rate rise of 2 %/year equivalent to 40 million m².

Energy and environment
Due to the high insulation performance of our AABC products or AABC systems, environmental impacts are directly expected. Considering that we will begin to renovate of the oldest buildings which represent 35% of the park but 57% of the average energy consumption per annum, we can estimate:
• A reduction of 0.25% per year of the European energy consumption related building’s sector.
• A reduction of 2.5% after 10 years, increasing to more than 5% after 20 years with regard to the current consumption.
• A reduction of 30% of CO2 emissions.

HOMESKIN AABC Material

HOMESKIN Building Consumption & Emission

HOMESKIN Partners Map

HOMESKIN Systems Partners