EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Trilemma of historic buildings: Smart district heating systems, bioeconomy and energy efficiency

Andra Blumberga, Ritvars Freimanis, Indra Muizniece, Kriss Spalvins and Dagnija Blumberga

Energy, 2019, vol. 186, issue C

Abstract: Today buildings become part of Smart Energy Systems. 4th generation district heating network requires buildings with low energy consumption. In Europe, historic buildings account for around 30% from total buildings stock with high energy consumption which has to be reduced. Many of them have heritage value and external insulation of walls is not possible. If internal insulation is applied, careful hygrothermal assessment has to be carried out to avoid critical moisture conditions in the wall leading to failure modes. Insulation material market is dominated by petrochemicals or non-renewable natural materials. Yet development of bio-based thermal insulation materials is increasing and some of them successfully entered the market. EU Bioeconomy Strategy enhances use of bioresources to increase their added value. The main goal of this research is to assess applicability of innovative bio-based pine needles insulation material that is produced based on bioeconomy principles as internal insulation material for historic massive walls. Results show that studied material is highly porous, has high moisture transfer, storage capacity, and is good hygric regulator. Lime treated material has no mold growth at relative humidity 85%. Even if insulation material is treated with lime, heat savings have to be sacrificed to reduce critical conditions for mold growth.

Keywords: Bio-based insulation materials; Internal insulation; Historic buildings; Bioeconomy; Energy efficiency in buildings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544219314100
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:186:y:2019:i:c:s0360544219314100

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2019.07.071

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:186:y:2019:i:c:s0360544219314100