Building Integration
The target of the group is to develop new sustainable material & technology solutions, mainly for the building sector, with a strong focus on climate change mitigation. In our projects, we cooperate with partners both from industry and academia. The group's activities are roughly categorised into the four key areas of (i) carbon dioxide removing materials and technologies, (ii) sustainable thermal insulation materials, (iii) high-performance aerogel insulation and (iv) human-building interaction.
Carbon dioxide removing materials and technologies
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of this century. It necessitates the development of new technologies to decarbonise our society if living standards and global development are not supposed to be completely abandoned. Carbon dioxide removal, i.e. the physical removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, is one key component of this strategy, in which biomass-based solutions can and are likely to play a significant role. A promising technology for that is the pyrolysis of biomass, which stabilizes the majority of the contained carbon against physico-chemical and biological breakdown, combined with the subsequent use of the pyrolysis products, for example in the form of building materials.
Plant-based and other locally available natural materials are ideal sources for sustainable insulation materials. Our goal is to create materials and products that are competitive with current conventional insulation materials, so that the relatively high greenhouse gas emissions of these can be avoided. Whenever these materials are based on biomass, ideally waste-based biomass, their use has the additional advantage of temporary carbon storage in the building.
High-performance aerogel insulation
Silica aerogels are ideally suited as insulation materials for buildings in context with special requirements, due to their extremely low thermal conductivity in combination with being vapour-permeable, hydrophobic and for some products non-flammable. We work on developing new aerogel materials and solutions for application in sustainable buildings. Also outside of the building sector, for example in transportation such as trains, aerogels can provide otherwise impossible solutions.
Buildings are a key area of our life where technology interacts with our wishes, behaviours and decision making, affecting both our satisfaction with our living or working conditions and the sustainability of these. We study human-building interactions with building users as well as building professionals in order to improve thermal comfort, energy performance and the sustainability of buildings.
