ICECLAY · Highly efficient production of ultra-lightweight clay-aerogel materials and their integrated composites for building insulation

40% of energy consumption and 36% CO2 emissions in Europe are directly related to the buildings due mainly to inefficient insulation materials and systems. Currently required insulation performance may only be achieved either by installing extremely thick ordinary insulation materials and sacrificing living spaces or by using unaffordable the state-of-the-art insulation materials (e.g. silica aerogel). Of European building sector, more than 99% are SME and buildings construction market reached over 1 trillion equivalent to about 9% of European GDP, representing a total workforce of 25 million jobs.The ICECLAY project aims at creating a new generation of low cost and most efficient insulation materials for EU building construction and hence enhancing the competitiveness of SMEs in EU construction sector. The project is to develop nano-structured ultra-lightweight clay-aerogel and its integrated composites by using harmless and inexpensive nano-scale minerals, water and eco-friendly or soluble/dispersible low-cost polymers, through innovative and cost effective freeze-drying processes. The ICECLAY will provide, due to their extremely porous structure and reduced thickness, the superior thermal insulation specially designed for highly energy efficiency building’s retrofit and advanced HAVC systems. The developed innovative thin and flexible lightweight ICECLAY board and film will claim to be an excellent and cheaper alternative to the unaffordable high-performance insulation materials like the space oriented supercritical-dried silica aerogel and vacuum insulation panels. The developed powder based ICECLAY will be used as superior enhancing thermal insulation fillers for a broad range of building products like concrete, drywalls, bricks, plasters and coatings.