Global Insulation Conference & Exhibition 2014
30 - 31 October 2014, Copenhagen, Denmark
Image gallery for the 9th Global Insulation Conference and Exhibition 2014
The 9th Global Insulation Conference, Exhibition and Awards has taken place in Copenhagen, attracting over 180 delegates from 29 countries, as well as 24 exhibitors. The 10th anniversary event will take place in Istanbul in September 2015. Here we give highlights of the event.
The event started on the night before the conference proper, with its traditional welcome party in the exhibition area. In total, 24 exhibitors showed their equipment and services for the global insulation industry, and this was the largest gathering of exhibitors so far at the event.
Conference first day
The first day of the event welcomed Connie Enghus of Rockwool, the second largest producer of insulation materials in the world, who spoke first. Western Europe makes up 59% of the company's sales, with Russia and Eastern Europe making up 24%. Insulation makes up 82% of sales, with systems making up the rest. Global demand for energy-efficient buildings continues to grow. Connie pointed out that by 2018/19, all new public buildings in the EU must have net-zero energy levels, while by 2020/21 all new buildings - including domestic dwelling - must have that level of energy consumption. At the moment, buildings are the biggest energy consumer in the EU, with 40% of the share, while industry uses 25% of the energy and transport uses 32%. Buildings provide the second largest untapped and cost effective potential target for energy savings after the energy sector itself. "Tightness of the building envelope is vital and solutions are required for penetrations and interfaces in order to be able to meet 2020 goals." The REDAir Flex system has been designed to be energy efficient, eliminating thermal bridges, but also to be easy for installers and to have zero maintenance. The system eliminates traditional materials like metal and wood and hence removes the possibility of rust and mould. Connie suggested that the whole system is recyclable and has zero fire risk. She concluded, "Insulation alone is not enough, multiple properties of the material are required."
Grazyna Mitchener of PolyChemTech next spoke on designer insulation materials. Grazyna stated that designer materials will have great combinations of properties by following a few simple rules: learn from nature and learn from other people's mistakes and experience: once you have evolved as much as you can, you must start to revolt and to think differently. She mentioned Danish physicist Martin Knudsen (1871 - 1949, taught and conducted research at the Technical University of Denmark 1km away from the conference venue), who pointed out that thermal conductivity reduces with mean free path of the gas molecules, partly due to the reduction of convection. Cell sizes of less than 1µm (and optimally less than 68nm) can effectively use the Knudsen effect to reduce gas-phase thermal conductivity to below 20mW/mK. Grazyna continued on to say that super-sophisticated properties of fibres have been developed, including nano-pitted, nano-protrusions and porous fibres which have important implications for insulation performance. She pointed out that organic foams can have very good insulation properties. Different forms of carbon have radically different insulation properties, from carbon black, buckminsterfullerenes, graphite or graphenes. In the same way, polyethylene can take many forms with varying thermal conductivity, notably with anisotropy along different phonon layers. She suggested that new insulating materials might be developed that could be switched on and off, and also that they could be configured like heat pumps that could be made to transfer heat from one place to another. The management of the phonon mechanism of heat transfer will - in the future - radically improve thermal insulation. Some clays are also known to have insulation properties and Grazyna suggested that this was due to their nano-scale chemical and physical properties - we can and should learn from this. Polymers with intrinsic micro porosity, PIMs (polymers with intrinsic microporosity), and ion-exchange resins with micro and macro-pores may show the way forward.
Stephen Long of Ineos Styrenics next spoke on the end-of-life for insulation materials. The Waste Framework Directive of 2008 gave new directions on the deconstruction of buildings in Europe. Stephen pointed out that only around 1% of the total of construction and demolition waste is actually composed of insulation (and gypsum product) waste. The waste hierarchy favours the reduction of waste, then reuse, recycling, recovery and then in the final instance, landfilling. The UN has said that it wants to see an end to waste by 2050. The EU plans to refurbish 2% of the entire building stock each year to near zero energy consumption, looks to increase resource efficiency in buildings and plans that by 2020 70% of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste will be recycled. Stephen suggested around 60 different sustainability measurement methodologies are currently at large in Europe, leading to confusion and inability to compare approaches and outcomes. Construction and demolition waste (CDW) makes up a third of the waste generated in the EU and the large majority of this can be recycled, resulting in local jobs growth. The durability of insulation materials is an important factor in the life cycle analysis of insulation materials. Extended producer responsibility would make the producer responsible for the performance of the material in the post-consumer phase, i.e. during building deconstruction and recycling. Chemical additives will need to be carefully considered when being added to insulation materials: producers will need to ask themselves, 'Can these be recycled?'The EU is currently trying to nudge industry and consumers in Europe towards the establishment of a true circular materials economy, but there is obviously some way to go.
Henri Busker of the USP Marketing Consultancy looked at the status and trends of the European construction industry. In short, northern Europe is doing well, but southern Europe and France are struggling. However, despite the financial crisis, there is a trend towards more efficient buildings and higher levels of sustainability in building construction in Europe. The biggest drivers towards sustainability are laws and regulations and then economic or financial advantages (rather than idealistic considerations). Building Information Modelling (creation of a full 3D model of a building incorporating material performance information) is now required for public buildings in the UK and Netherlands, and is a strong potential trend for the future in other countries, which will change the business model for many companies involved in the building materials and construction industries.
Frederik Teisner of Qubica, the company formerly known as Seelen, spoke about the optimisation of packaging compression at the cold end of the mineral wool line, even though his company can provide all components from both hot and cold ends of the production line. The overall trend in mineral production is to compress the product more and more in order to decrease storage and distribution costs. Challenges are in over-compression, film properties and in fibre recovery. The task to make square packs, rather than oval or bowed packs, is also a challenge. The greater the compression forces required, the greater the challenges for both the machinery required for compression but also for film properties and fibre recovery. Compression forces started around the year 2000 at less than 800kg, but are now approaching 3000kg and more. A rate-dependent partial hysteresis loop of compression and expansion may be shown by mineral fibre insulation, whereby it will not expand back to its original low density after compression, and this loop will vary from product to product.
Patrice Maltais of Premier Tech Chronos next also spoke about packaging innovations for the insulation industry. The company has many capabilities for packaging and concentrates only on the cold end of insulation processing, including baling, bag placing, sealing, palletising and stretch wrapping and hooding. Patrice showed examples of bag placers and sealers, and a new stretch hooding system.
The final session of the first day of the conference was suggested by Global Insulation's own Dr Peter Edwards and consisted of an audience-driven SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of the global insulation industry, which will form the basis of a future article in Global Gypsum Magazine's insulation section.
Global Insulation Awards Dinner
Delegates journeyed by coach to the famous Tivoli Gardens in the centre of Copenhagen for an atmospheric walk through the park and for the Global Insulation Awards Dinner at a convivial circular restaurant. The Global insulation company of the year was named as Owens Corning, equipment supplier of the year was Genesys Systems Integrator, insulation plant of the year was Armacell Benelux, the Global Insulation product of the year was the Rockwool window system and the technical innovation ward went to MPN Maschinenbau for its concentrically-wound square and rectangular mineral wool pipe sections. The Global Insulation 'personality of the year' award went to Grazyna Mitchener of PolyChemTech. Delegates were then entertained by Zindy, a famous Danish chanteuse, before heading off into the night to enjoy the multifarious charms of Tivoli and night-time Copenhagen.
Second day
On the second day of the conference, Stefan Winkler of Fuchs Lubritech started the session on insulation production advances with a presentation on high temperature lubricants for mineral wool manufacturing, specifically on lubrication applications in the high-temperature curing oven conveying chains. Correct lubrication reduces chain elongation and increases chain lifetime. "Everywhere that friction occurs, lubrication must take place." The viscosity of the oil is crucial, since there is a payoff between adhesiveness (to prevent flinging-off) and the ability of the lubricant to penetrate to where it is required. Higher temperatures decrease the viscosity of oils, leading to thinner lubricating films, so that sophisticated additives may be required to alter the temperature response of the lubricants. Low evaporation rates at high temperatures are beneficial, since there is lower consumption and there will be less vapour and less condensate in the process. Low lubricant friction values lead to reduced energy consumption in the process. Stefan gave a case study of a hardening oven in a mineral wool plant whose chains had become blocked: the chains were sprayed with an extremely low viscosity ester-based oil to free them, and subsequently a standard Stabylan lubricant was used to maintain free movement.
Mark Brims of Cottonscope Pty Ltd next introduced the CottonscopeHD instrument for the rapid and accurate measurement of fibre diameter distribution. A custom optical system captures images of fibres dispersed in water, using a powerful LED strobe which flashes in pulses a few microseconds long. The instrument can measure thousands of fibres per minute and gives a graph of the fibre diameter distribution of the sample. Higher numbers of diameter measurements brings down the standard deviation of the determination. The instrument can also be used to determine the curvature of fibres. Mark pointed out that the machine could be used for a number of different tasks in the insulation industry, including the forecasting of resistance to compression of mineral fibre bats.
A co-authored paper from Gregor Haverkemper and Marc Fricke, both from parts of BASF, spoke about an innovative insulation material. Prevention of CO2 emissions through the use of insulation is one of the main opportunities for the company. The authors mentioned that any house built in Germany now has to be three times more energy efficient than back in 1980, when 040 lambda materials might have been the norm. BASF patented the Styropor EPS material back in 1950, and has been innovating in foams for insulation ever since. Since 1996, the company has been using CO2 as a blowing agent, sacrificing some lambda for better environmental performance. The company has also switched to high molecular weight non-bioavailable polymeric flame retardants. By dosing graphite into EPS to create Neopor, the company reduced infra-red conductivity especially at low insulation density. Triple-paned windows were shown to have a payback time of perhaps 25 years, while external wall insulation had a payback time of 15 years, roof insulation 12 years and basement ceiling insulation only about eight years. A polyurethane-based aerogel insulation called Slentite was introduced. Again using the Knudsen effect, where thermal conductivity is reduced as the diameter of pores is reduced, especially to below a cell size of 68nm, it was pointed out that nano-pores dramatically reduce heat transfer between gas molecules. Slentite is a new type of organic aerogel based on polyurethane chemistry exhibiting homogeneous nanoporosity, achieving the best insulation rating for a strong panel with a lambda value down to 17mW/mK. A new pilot plant is being constructed for the material, prior to offering the product to consumers.
Dimitry Eliseev of Himsintez Llc of Russia, next spoke on a means to cut down emissions during the production of mineral and glass wool. Phenol-based resins used in the production of mineral wools can be volatile during the curing step, forming formaldehyde. Ecose insulation from Knauf and Metadynea's additives show the way forward to low or zero-formaldehyde insulation. Himsintez offers an oil emulsion 'Emoil F,' an oil emulsion and formaldehyde acceptor. At temperatures over around 240°C, the acceptor binds any formaldehyde into a non-volatile form, which also neutralises free phenol groups and decreases discolouration of insulation and plaster when in the presence of iron-based compounds.
Petri Jetsu of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland went on to speak about foam-formed wood-based thermal insulation panels. In foam forming, fibres, water, a foaming agent and other materials are mixed to create a foam, with an air content of 50 - 70%: fibres are 'frozen' in their dispersed state, leading to uniform material distribution. Using this process, highly porous sheets can be produced, with excellent layering properties. The foam can be modified in a number of ways, including its density, stability and bubble size distribution, to alter final properties. A variety of fibre lengths can also be used which again will change product properties. Very high speed production lines (2000m/minute) can be used to produce the material. Water absorption can be reduced with the addition of an alkyl ketone dimer synthesised from fatty acids, while addition of modified nitrogen-containing phosphate salts improves fire-retardancy. Thermal insulation properties can be improved by closing the surface of any produced insulation panels or by forming closed-cell like structures in the insulation panels. Petri concluded by saying that the technology was available for commercialisation, to the obvious interest of attendant insulation company delegates.
Michel Cassart of Total Refining & Chemicals spoke about Excell-R grey EPS. Insulation is the fastest-growing styrenics market, forming 25% of the total European market, and showing 4% annual growth. Michel said that the Egyptians extracted a special resin from trees for mummification 5000 years ago, the active ingredient from which has been progressively improved to create polystyrene. EPS and XPS products have the same basic chemical building blocks, but EPS incorporates a blowing agent and creates low density products, while XPS products have higher compressive strength: the two types are used for different applications. Excell-R EPS is a grey EPS with improved thermal resistance, typically 20% higher than white EPS products. Michel introduced 'airpop,' a new name for polystyrene.
Professor Young Cheol Kwon of Halla University of South Korea closed the conference programme by speaking about phenolic foam boards. Open and closed-cell phenolic foam boards have different properties. The closed cells of the boards are formed by a non-freon blowing agent, has high insulation performance, long term integrity and non-burning characteristics. Closed-cell phenolic foam has insulating performance similar to EPS and to glass wool. Professor Kwon pointed out that the cost of insulation is a very small proportion of the total cost of the total building and said that designers should install insulation beyond what is currently required by building codes.
Farewell and conference prizes
At the conference farewell party, a number of prizes were awarded, including for the best exhibition stand award which went to Enetex. In the best presentation awards, voted-for by the delegates, Michel Cassart was third with his paper on Excell-R EPS, while Gregor Haverkemper and Marc Fricke of BASF were the runners-up. However, Grazyna Mitchener won her second prize at the conference, winning the prize for the best presentation at the event.
Delegates at the conference rated Global Insulation Conference very highly, with the best ever exhibition, networking potential and conference overall marks.
The 10th Global Insulation Conference, Exhibition and Awards will take place in Istanbul in September 2015.
