Scientists develop game-changing ‘glass brick’ that could revolutionize construction: ‘The highest insulating performance’::The team of scientists developed an aerogel glass brick, which is a translucent and thermally insulating material.
I wish the article would have mentioned an R-value or at least something to describe the actual efficiency of its insulating ability.
Or include a picture of the actual material instead of a stock photo of a glass brick stairwell…
The source article has this “visualisation”:
From that I’d assume it’s not suitable for windows, but it is suitable for taking advantage of natural lighting (not to mention it just looks pretty cool… though I’m not sure about the rest of the architecture in that image).
It’s also good at broadcasting to your neighborhood whether or not you’re home.
Any time an article references another, immediately jump ship and read the original.
The glass brick has a measured thermal conductivity of 53 mW/m*K and a compressive strength of nearly 45 MPa.”
“This is the highest insulating performance of any brick found in the technical literature, let alone on the market. Additionally, it comes with the property of light transmission.”
https://www.sci.news/othersciences/materials/aerogel-glass-brick-11848.html
For comparison: From Seves Glass Block: "Unlike standard glass blocks that have a thermal transmission coefficient "U"of 2.8 W/sq mt x K), HTI has a “U” value of 1.8 W/(sq mt x K). (https://www.sevesglassblock.com/product/191916-hti-wave-sahara-2s/). So common glass block is 2.8, fancier glass block is 1.8, and this new Aeroblock 0.053!! I think I did my numbers correctly, and DANG! I wan’t to start building walls with this stuff tomorrow!!
Also: Get the light & keep the warmth - A highly insulating, translucent aerogel glass brick for building envelopes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352710222016060
Edit: Looks like my numbers are off, above, per @A_A@lemmy.world. Clearly, I’m neither an architect, nor a mathematician.
Anything to get rid of modern vinyl houses.
Masonry is always worth it for housing, we need to go back to building houses that’ll still be habitable a century later.
You are confusing the units : the value for aerogel is for a 1 m thick wall, while the value for your glass blocks is for 16 centimeter (one block thick). So an error of 16/100 ratio (or 100/16).
A quick search yields an R value of 9.6-20 per inch for already available aerogel insulating materials. So a standard exterior wall would have a 3.5"(2x4) or 5.5" (2x6) cavity giving R values of 33.6 and 52.8 respectively at the lower efficiency and cheaper options. That is better performance than pretty much any other option, but the cost is like 10-30 times that of other options.
If they are containing the aerogel granules in glass, which seems to be the case, the thermal bridging would be an issue for efficiency. A solid glass block has an R value of 1.15… A triple glazed window has an R value of 7-8.
The better option than glass block would be filling the cavity of a double glazed window with aerogel granules, which would cut down on thermal bridging to the just the sash/casing and would be more economically viable for production.
but the cost is like 10-30 times that of other options
Are you just talking construction costs? How about if you consider the lifetime energy consumption of a building over, I dunno, 50 years? And using zero emission heating, since in 50 years we hopefully are not using fossil fuels for that.
Obviously that’s going to vary dramatically depending on the indoor/outdoor temperature delta and future renewable energy costs, so there are too many variables to come up with a number easily, but I could see these bricks being very cheap if you factor int he total cost over the life of the building.
The better option than glass block would be filling the cavity of a double glazed window with aerogel granules
Glass works ok for small windows - but large glass panels are fragile and expensive.
Isn’t aeorogel really expensive to begin with? I mean we have tech like Ytong and they are still using bricks in buildings. Why? Ytong seems expensive to uneducated who have no clue about TCO and engineering.
Aerogel is insanely expensive. It has an R-value of 10 per inch and the handy property of costing about $1 per R-value per square foot. So a piece of aerogel 1" thick by 4’ x 8’ would cost $320; the equivalent piece of 2" thick XPS foam board (also R-10) costs about $50 these days. So with aerogel you’re paying a 500% to 600% premium to have your insulation be half as thick as XPS would be - and to essentially have no compression resistance at all (vs. the 20+ PSI of foam board).
Aren’t we running out of sand? How is this a sustainable option.
We’re running out of concrete sand, glass sand doesn’t have to be as picky because you’re melting it
Yes in a time where all insulated homes are desperate to keep the cool in during summer, adding more light through will really help us.
I can’t imagine there’s any reason they couldn’t make an opaque version of the same. Would probably look pretty cool in black. Or better yet, make them electrochromic so you can have more light in the winter and less in the summer.
I mean, I’m all for better insulated homes. I will say it’ll be hard to convince people to go for this aesthetic, though. It’s very 80s.
Right now I feel like MCM is having a moment sooooo maybe in twenty years the prices on this will go down and 80s style will be back in fashion?
Houses can have a “greenhouse” effect. Light passes through, and strikes something. It is absorbed and turned to heat. The object then radiates that as infrared. Thermally shielded windows then trap this in the room. With enough insulation, and enough light, this can become a significant issue.
This is assuming, however, that these bricks are transparent to visible light, but opaque to IR.
It’s more for public buildings with glass fronts. “Revolutionize construction” is a questionable headline. Aerogels have use for replacing insulation in other ways, though.
Yeah but then I’d have to stop throwing stones, and that’s one of my favorite pastimes.
So if you could theoretically let out a big enough fart, it would be visible on Google Maps.
And yet Lemmy is so small I immediately knew which post they were referring to.
