Wax in the Walls: Phase-Changing Insulation
by TreeHugger on 03.31.05
The idea of walls melting into liquid doesn’t sound like a good thing, but it is if they’re coated in a plaster filled with wax capsules designed by BASF to act as an active layer of insulation. Rather than trying to hold heat in or out, as most traditional insulations do, the Micronal capsules react with heat on the outside of a building and liquefy, absorbing heat to accomplish the phase change...
...and thus preventing that heat from entering. When it gets cold, the wax solidifies, and the heat that was stored is released. The “phase-changing microcapsule” wallboards don’t replace insulation, but they vastly improve energy efficiency. Combined with energy-saving windows and other such features, only one liter of oil would be needed to heat each square meter of a home for an entire year. For comparison, that’s 5% of what the average German home needs. You can get the wallboards now in Germany or Italy, and soon in the UK, but no word on when the States will have it. Via WorldChanging via WBCSD ::BASF [by KK]
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Fab idea. Highest practicality would be in a climate of warm days and cool nights, especially where winter solar gain is significnt.
For homes where everone leaves for work or school after breakfast, you'd be theoretically able to turn the thermostat down even earlier than you did before installing the stuff, and the set point could be lower. That's because the "coast down" period (to "gone" temp setting") would be more comfortable due to heat radiating back in from the interior walls.
Cool.