oa Innovative building materials for energy performance in buildings

The notion of sustainable development is mainly based on innovation in order to keep the life cycle of the domain under study alive, by involving new requirements that will change the methods and practices of the various stakeholders. The construction sector, whether being commercial or residential, is also integrated in the sustainable development approach since its implementation until its exploitation by the occupants.

Several countries around the world, including Morocco, are engaged in the sustainable construction process to build energy-efficient buildings capable of offering thermal comfort, a considerable reduction in energy expenditure and a significant decrease in emissions. The building sector is considered to be the most energy intensive and the second largest source of CO2 emissions after transport. The main sources of energy consumption in buildings can be due to lighting, ventilation, air conditioning, heating and hot water sanitary.

A house with low energy consumption must be planned from its conception stage and must be submitted to modifications for its energy consumption patterns by the choice of its orientation and the types of energies used in order to limit the energy consumption. In addition, energy savings can be further gained with the proper choice of innovative building materials evolved by building and civil engineering companies capable of providing thermal inertia in buildings. This is achieved by either incorporating new materials into the usual building products or by changing their basic formulas. These materials are able to provide buildings with thermal inertia since they have a low thermal conductivity able to keep lime buildings in winter and cold in summer without resorting to other energy-consuming means namely ventilation and heating.

In this context, several materials that have been proposed by previous researchers are discussed. These materials are considered sustainable solutions to ensure thermal insulation of tomorrow and can be either mineral or synthetic. Examples of mineral materials that can be used for thermal insulation are the natural basalt fiber for panels insulation and the use of pozzolan in building materials. On the other hand, examples of synthetic materials can be the corrugated cardboard panels recycled from packaging industries and hemp fibers, flax, rapeseed, date palm wood that can be used for reinforcement in building materials.

The general objective of this project is mainly to propose solutions to ensure a good thermal comfort to the buildings which can be through the development of innovative building materials based on natural fibers with focus on the date palm leaflets which are very abundant in Morocco. In this context, several analysis are possible on the leaflets and on the construction materials prepared in order to study their behavior vis-à-vis the energy efficiency in the buildings.