THE THERMAL ANALYSIS OF A PET BOTTLE BUILDING ENVELOPE MODEL

Statistics have shown that less than 1% of the overall materials embodied in the daily products people use, whether from household, commerce, manufacturing or building are still in their possession after six months [1]. The rest becomes waste. Despite this fact, exploitations of new raw materials are undergone, leading to an increase of the energy levels the new materials embody. Consumerism has implemented into the peoples' behavior the irrationality in using the available resources that drastically contradicts the thoughtfulness of the traditional societies towards conserving the utmost. Apart from the high level of resource exploitation and waste production our society needs to deal with, energy consumption remains the most important environmental problem arisen in the last century. The building sector is accounted for 40% of the world's energy consumption, being the largest prodigal human activity [2]. This paper presents an experimental low cost building envelope model that reuses wasted PET beverage containers (bottles) as building material. It presents a possible strategy concerning waste collection that allows the bottle to be transformed into a construction material, an analysis of the envelope's thermal performance and the factors that allow it to behave as a passive solar system. The chosen solution focuses on saving wasted matter and extending the lifespan of the bottles that are intended to be disposed of, in an attempt to attain low embodied energy materials in building envelopes. At the same time, the energy performance of the proposed model helps reducing the operating energy consumption of the building incorporating this envelope. In certain conditions, the thermal performance of the proposed solution is comparable to more traditional building solutions, proving the reliability of the approach.