Eco-efficient Materials for Mitigating Building Cooling Needs: Design, Properties and Applications

Climate change is one of the most important environmental problems faced by Planet Earth. The majority of CO2 emissions come from burning fossil fuels for energy production and improvements in energy efficiency shows the greatest potential for any single strategy to abate global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the energy sector. Energy related emissions account for almost 80% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions. The building sector is the largest energy user responsible for about 40% of the EU’s total final energy consumption. In Europe the number of installed air conditioning systems has increased 500% over the last 20 years, but in that same period energy cooling needs have increased more than 20 times. The increase in energy cooling needs relates to the current higher living and working standards. In urban environments with low outdoor air quality (the general case) this means that in summer-time one cannot count on natural ventilation to reduce cooling needs. Do not forget the synergistic effect between heat waves and air pollution which means that outdoor air quality is worse in the summer aggravating cooling needs. Over the next few years this phenomenon will become much worse because more people will live in cities, more than 2 billion by 2050 and global warming will aggravate cooling needs.

Table of Contents:
Ch 1- Introduction F. Pacheco-Torgal, University of Minho, Portugal PART I. PAVEMENTS FOR MITIGATING URBAN HEAT ISLAND EFFECTS Ch 2 – Coating materials to increase pavement's surface reflectance N Xie, Harbin Institute of Technology, China  Ch 3 – Pavements made of concrete with high solar reflectance Farhad Reza, University of California, USA Ch. 4 – Comparison of the performance of concrete and asphalt materials H. Li, University of California, USA PART II. FACADE MATERIALS FOR REDUCING COOLING NEEDS Ch. 5 – Green facades and living walls: vertical vegetation as a construction material Irina Susorovo, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA Ch. 6 – Comparing the performance of different facade materials N Alchapar, INCIHUSA, Argentina Ch. 7 – Lotus ceramics for counteracting urban heat island effects Kiyoshi Okada, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Ch. 8 – Innovative evaporative cooling walls Alessandro Carbonari, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy PART III. ROOFING MATERIALS FOR REDUCING COOLING NEEDS Ch. 9 – High albedo roof coatings for reducing cooling needs Anna Laura Pisello, University of Perugia, Italy Ch 10 – Solar cooling with hydrophilic porous materials for reducing cooling needs D. Karamanis, University of Ioannina, Greece Ch 11 - Cool green roofs for reducing cooling needs Yann-Jou Lin, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Ch 12 – Influence of damaged vegetation on the reduction of cooling needs A. F. Speak, The University of Manchester, UK Ch 13 - Technical and economic analysis of green roofs to reduce cooling needs Fabrizio Ascione, University of Naples, Italy PART IV. PCMS AND CHROMOGENIC SMART MATERIALS FOR REDUCING COOLING NEEDS Ch. 14 – PCMs for reducing cooling needs Luisa F. Cabeza, University of Lleida, Spain Ch. 15 - Nanomaterials embedded PCMs for reducing building cooling needs S.Kalaiselvam, Anna University, India Ch. 16 – Thermocromic materials for reducing cooling needs Claes Granqvist, Uppsala University, Sweden Ch. 17 – Electrochromic walls for reducing cooling needs Marco Pittaluga, Cagliari University, Italy Ch. 18 – Electrochromic windows impact in the energy performance of buildings in Mediterranean climates: A case study P.Tavares, INESC Coimbra, Portugal

About the Author :
Dr. F. Pacheco Torgal is a Principal Investigator at the University of Minho in Portugal. He holds the title of Counsellor at the Portuguese Engineers Association. He is a member of the editorial boards for nine international journals. Over the last 10 years he has participated in the research decision for more than 460 papers and has also acted as a Foreign Expert on the evaluation of 22 PhD thesis. Over the last 10 years he has also been a Member of the Scientific Committees for more than 60 conferences, most of them held in Asian countries. He is also a grant assessor for several scientific institutions in 15 countries, including the UK, US, Netherlands, China, France, Australia, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Spain, Czech Republic, Chile, Saudi Arabia, UA. Emirates, Croatia, Poland, and the EU Commission. In the last 10 years, he reviewed more than 70 research projects. Prof. Dr. Luisa F. Cabeza is a full professor on Thermal Engineering at the University of Lleida, Spain. She holds a degree in Industrial Engineering and in Chemical Engineering, as well as a MBA and a PhD in Industrial Engineering (University Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain). Prof. Cabeza’s research interests include thermal energy storage in all its aspects, from the different technologies (sensible, latent and sorption&chemical reactions) to different applications. Further research interests include social aspects (social acceptance, social evaluation, etc.). She is active in different national and international networks on the topic and she holds numerous awards. Prof. Cabeza has co-authored more than 250 journal papers and book chapters in the area of thermal energy storage. Claes-Göran Granqvist is a Senior Professor of Solid State Physics at the Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala University, Sweden. His research is focused on optical and electrical properties of materials, especially thin films for energy efficiency and solar energy utilization. Professor Granqvist has been a member of the CEI-Europe Faculty since 2002.

Review :
"This book is an effort in promoting a cool scenario by wide-scale utilization of advanced materials to reduce cooling energy use in buildings...it is recommended as a good read to both academics and policy makers." --Professor Ashem Akbari from Concordia University, Canada