Effectiveness of Phase Change Materials within Building Insulation

Heating and cooling of buildings has been a problem for centuries. Only recently, has it been possible to control temperatures within buildings. However, these processes require tremendous amounts of energy use. The energy needed to maintain a building's temperature is diverted from energy that can be utilized in other applications. Insulation is one of the best ways to preserve temperature stability, but it doesn’t mean that performance can’t be improved. Recently, research has aimed to overcome this obstacle by investigating the use of phase change materials inside of the insulation. When using phase change materials in insulation, much less energy is needed to hold temperatures steady and significantly reduces overall energy consumption. However, this technology hasn’t been widely adopted due to slow energy transfer and lack of research. While slow energy transfer is good in insulation, the objective is to preserve moderate temperatures instead of extreme ones. Therefore PCM integrated Insulation needs to be researched more but can become a great advancement for energy efficiency.