Advances in the building materials for thermal comfort and energy saving

Building sector is one of the largest primary energy consuming sectors and contributes substantial atmospheric emissions. With growth and improvement in technology, the energy consumption and comfort levels have increased exponentially. Minimizing energy consumption in all energy consuming sectors have become progressively imperative worldwide because of the many important issues, such as; increase in energy demand, energy security, rising energy cost and the need to reduce the environmental damage of energy consumption. In building sector there are various opportunities available to have a better indoor thermal comfort conditions and to reduce energy consumption by using advance materials. The use of advance and innovative materials (e.g. Phase change materials (PCMs), thermochromic materials, radiant and thermal barrier materials) instead of conventional materials is advantageous in achieving better indoor thermal comfort and saving energy, therefore it is imperative to pay attention to the selection of building materials. Different materials are used in different components of buildings; hence it requires improvement in all materials to have better indoor conditions. In this paper, a review of the latest patents and literature on advance building materials has been discussed. The study reveals that the use of advance materials is promising in energy saving and better indoor thermal comfort as compared to the conventional building materials. © 2013 Bentham Science Publishers.