Effect of nano vacuum insulation panel and nanogel glazing on the energy performance of office building

Nanotechnology has proved to be a promising candidate for thermal insulation of buildings. Nano aerogel and nano vacuum insulation panel (VIP) have been widely explored in the recent past, and their viability in buildings remains an ongoing research challenge. Even though a lot of works have been reported from around the globe, the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) region, particularly the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) – a leading building construction market in the world, has a wide scope of research in this area. This article presents a simulation study on the energy performance of a prototype office building in KSA, by replacing the conventional polystyrene insulation and double-glazing with nano VIP and nano aerogel (nanogel) glazing. The building model was built in Autodesk Revit (version 2015), and the energy simulation was performed by ECOTECT software (version 2011) by using the weather data of Dhahran. Considering polystyrene insulation in walls and roof and double-glazed windows as the base case, nanogel and nano VIP were employed individually, and in combinations of window, wall and roof. The results show that, compared to the base case, the nano VIP in walls and roof and nanogel glazing in windows could jointly save about 18% of annual energy consumption of the building, wherein the contribution of nanogel glazing alone is 16% for the setpoint temperature (ST) band of 19–27°C. The sensitivity analysis has revealed that the energy saving potential of the nanogel glazing is sensitive to the ST band.

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