14 NEWS FEATURE Delivering emissions reductions
Marc Nickels of Kingspan Technical Insulation discusses how one substantial source of embodied emissions – building services haulage and deliveries – can be reduced on residential developments.
T
he UK Green Building Council anticipates that by 2035, embodied carbon emissions may make up around half of total emissions from the built environment. Embodied carbon is the result of all the processes needed to construct, maintain and ultimately dismantle a building at the end of its life. These emissions are already considered within major sustainability standards and are expected to come under greater scrutiny through local planning measures (such as the London Plan) so it’s important that developers consider how they can be addressed.
One key source of embodied emissions during the construction phase is from the road haulage needed to transport materials to site. New research from Rider Levett Bucknall has revealed that by using thinner, more thermally effi cient pipe and ductwork insulation solutions over lower performing alternatives, it’s possible to
insulate far greater lengths of services from a single delivery. This can reduce the number of deliveries needed for a project and was shown to cut the emissions associated with their transport by as much as 66.67% for pipe insulation and 33.41% for duct insulation solutions.
EFFICIENT SERVICES
The key performance metric for insulation materials is their thermal conductivity (lambda). This is the measure of how well they prevent heat conduction at a given thickness. The lower the thermal conductivity of the material, the more effective it is at preventing this type of heat transfer, meaning a slimmer thickness can be used with no loss of performance.
In pipe and ductwork applications, insulation materials are typically required to limit heat losses from services to the rates provided in BS 5422:2009 as
a minimum. In practice, the thermal conductivity of the materials can have a major impact on the thickness of insulation needed to achieve these values. For example, materials such as phenolic pipe insulation typically have a far lower thermal conductivity than that of alternatives such as mineral fi bre. A comparison carried out on a typical low temperature hot water system (<95°C) showed that, in some cases, the lower performing mineral fi bre pipe insulation needed to be twice as thick as the phenolic alternative to reduce heat losses to the same rate. These differences can become even greater where enhanced specifi cations of pipe insulation are required, as is often the case on heat networks. Similarly, a comparison of heated ductwork lagged with mineral fi bre with a pre-insulated phenolic ductwork system showed that to achieve a heat loss rate
BY SPECIFYING THINNER INSULATION FOR PROJECTS, IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO INSULATE GREATER LENGTHS OF PIPE AND DUCTWORK WITH EACH DELIVERY TO SITE
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