Phase Change Building Materials A licensing Opportunity

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Phase Change Building MaterialsA licensing
Opportunity

• Dr. Douglas C. Hittle
• Director, Solar Energy Application Laboratory

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Colorado State University

• Solar Energy Applications Laboratory (SEAL)
• Clients Honeywell, Dupont, Nippon Electric
  Glass, DOE, NSF and others
• University generates more than 200 million/yr in
  external funding
• Colorado State University Research Foundation
  (CSURF)

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Inventor

• Dr. Douglas Hittle
• Professor of Mechanical Engineering
• Expertise in thermal science, building heat
  transfer, energy storage, passive and active
  solar
• Building analysis software developer
• BLAST

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Laboratory Mission

• Carry out interdisciplinary research in energy
  conservation and renewable energy
• Solar cooling
• Cylindrical solar collector design
• Cold air distribution
• Artificial intelligence applied to control of
  building energy systems
• Phase change fabrics

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Background PCMs in Fabric
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New Test Instrument
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DOE Funded Research

• PCM Floor Tile for Passive Solar Applications

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Technology - Phase Change Process
Temperature T
T2
latent
Tmelt
T1 solid melting liquid
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Past issues with pcm in building materials

• Addition of paraffin wax often results in oozing,
  lack of structural integrity
• Phase change for floor applications needs to
  occur at 82F
• Must meet ASTM standards

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Phase Change Floor Tile

• Microencapsulated paraffin (octadecane) is
  incorporated into agglomerate floor tile.
• The tile stores solar energy during the day
  (paraffin melts) and releases it at night
  (paraffin solidifies) to reduce home heating
  costs

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Agglomerate Floor Tile

• Quartz chips
• Quartz powder
• Resin binder

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Phase Change Floor Tile

• Replaces some quartz chips/powder with
  microencapsulated paraffin
• Patent pending status

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SEM Tile Photo
PCM capsules
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PCM Agglomerate Floor Tile Specifications
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New Tile Design
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Phase Change Floor Tile Features

• Provides significantly greater energy storage
  than traditional tile
• Can be applied over conventional sub floor
• When used in south facing solariums, provides
  significant heating energy savings
• Reduces heating cost

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Fuel Consumption/Energy Savings
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Market Drivers

• Industry analysts have said the acute shortages
  of natural gas could cause heating prices to
  soar 80 percent next winter
• Provides an energy conservation measure not
  currently available
• Increasing interest in energy self sufficiency

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From Passive Solar to Solariums

• Remodeling market
• Inexpensive way to add living space
• Manufactured and custom designed sunrooms
• 40 growth in past 3 years
• Average cost of manufactured sunroom 27,081
• Factory built sunrooms solariums - 2.5 billion
  industry

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Potential Market - PCM floors
US only.

• Estimated Solariums
• 553,890
• Assume half could benefit from passive solar -
  276,945 units
• Assume average of 14 ft. sq or 196 sq. ft.
• Price pr sq ft agglomerate with pcm -6/sq ft.
• Total potential market
• 325,000,000 annually

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Competition

• Concrete

Issue

• Cost of encapsulation

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Goal - pcm floor tile

• License phase change floor tile to industry
  partners
• Participate with partners in remaining
  development activities
• Assist partners in developing application
  guidelines and marketing strategies

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Next Steps

• Develop and test prototype tiles, completed under
  DOE/CSU grant, 206k.
• Experimentally verify the performance of the
  product in full scale side-by-side sun rooms
• Conduct field demonstrations in occupied homes
• Enhance Aesthetics
• Commercialize the product

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Benefit to potential partners

• New, large markets
• Chemical company
• Manufacturer of microencapsulated phase change
  material
• Floor Tile Company

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Phase Change Ceiling Tile

• Cooling Commercial Buildings

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Phase Change Ceiling Tile
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How Does It Work?

• In the majority of commercial buildings the air
  from rooms is returned to the air-condition unit
  via a ceiling plenum
• To reduce daytime peak air-condition demand
• Room temperature is set low at night (say 68 F)
• Cool air solidifies the pcm at night
• During the day the temperature is set slightly
  higher (73 F) and the air returning to the
  air-conditioning unit is cooled as the pcm melts

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Why Do We Want to do This
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Blackouts
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Demand charge reduction

• Most commercial offices are on a demand charge
  electrical rate schedule, a charge for the peak
  kW demand for power in each month.
• PCM ceiling tile can reduce peak demand caused by
  air-conditioning by 25 or about ½ watt/sq ft
• For a typical 100,000 sq ft building savings
  would be 5000 yr.

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Market
Retrofit market is 1.48 billion sq ft/yr New
market is 1.53 billion sq ft/yr At 0.20/sq ft
the total is 602 million/yr Based on cost
saving, users should be willing to pay 0.4 per
square foot, i.e. 1,202 million per year. Pcm
is about 0.12 lb/sq ft, easily supported by
current systems
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This is really a no brainer
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That Does it For Now

• Questions? (Likely response I dont know or
  It depends.)
• Future Topics
• Specular light shelf using ceiling tile
• Artificial intelligence and robust control
  applied to control of building energy systems