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| New building material for green solutions  Buildings of tomorrow will require a combination of minimised onsite energy generation incorporating maximised renewable heat energy sources; ultra-efficient building and insulation materials and equipment; and waste heat recovery. Orange Depot Systems has developed a new building material, which is a modified kind of mineral-fixed building material cured in a block in any requested shape and volume with a very special porous structure. This structure has the ability to get saturated with water completely up to 80% of its volume so far depending on the recipe and the individual requested compression strength, and hold the water by its own capillary structure. This material can be build over after curing without the need of a heavy-duty and expensive basin, tank or reservoir construction. The building material consists of conventional building components like cement, lime, sand, soil, additives etc., so it can be simply and conventionally manufactured, shipped, processed, and installed by low cost. This material saturated with water is not only able to store heat up to approx. 90°C but also cold temperatures around the 0°C level, because it is frost resistant under certain conditions. It can be delivered as a precast product in one block or as smaller modules as like a battery system including all the necessary heat transfer piping and equipment, or as a ready-mixed building material processed and cured only at the construction site. These storage units can be flexible placed or filled up right under the foundation slab or in the basement of the building, or beneath a patio or winter garden (see in the picture) on individual request and house building design. The material properties are adjustable depending to nearly every individual purpose, and even it can be used additionally as a backfill material. As a backfill material it has the advantage to have the ability to embed city pipeline infrastructures like sewer lines with its additional heat source potential. From the economic point of view its rather advisable to do this during sewer lines are newly laid or replaced or roads basically reconstructed. By this way the complete soil body under city streets can be developed for a long-term thermal storage network systems (see in the picture) – a huge future perspective. The basic idea is patented in Germany and patent-pending worldwide. The technology is still in the prototype phase and needs final definition of the different recipes and tailored product designs depending on local demands. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Construction News :: home page |