Mighty Buildings announced an interesting partnership with Honeywell for insulation technology.
Mighty Buildings’ business is to 3D print residential homes. Their concept is to print components and assemble the home in a regional factory, and then use cranes and trucks to transport and install the home on the building site.
They currently have a regional operation in California, and another in Monterrey, Mexico. The concept is regional because of the need to transport the homes from the factory.
They don’t use concrete as other construction 3D printing companies do. Instead they use a proprietary material to print their building components.
The news is that they’ve partnered with Honeywell to use that company’s new Solstice Liquid Blowing Agent.
For non-construction readers, a blowing agent is a foaming substance that is typically blown into wall gaps to form an insulating layer. The foam captures air in bubbles, which block much of the heat transfer.
The problem with most blowing agents is that they are not particularly friendly to the environment. The construction industry in general is one of the major source of greenhouse gases, particularly from concrete. There has been much interest in reducing the greenhouse gas footprint in the construction industry in recent years.
Honeywell apparently spent US$1B to develop their Solstice technology. They explain Solstice:
“Solstice liquid and gas blowing agents for foam insulation applications are based on hydrofluoro-olefin (HFO) technology, and with a global warming potential (GWP) of 1, 99.9% lower than hydrofluorocarbons (HFC) blowing agents. Solstice® blowing agents are helping customers realize their energy efficiency goals, with a 10% improvement in insulation performance vs hydrocarbons. Solstice blowing agents are non-ozone-depleting, nonflammable (ASTM E-681 and EU A11), listed under the U.S. EPA’s Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program to replace ozone-depleting substances, listed on the TSCA inventory/registered under REACH, and is VOC-exempt (per U.S. EPA).”
Mighty Buildings has integrated Solstice into their Monterrey factory, making the 3D printed panels much more capable of insulating heat, while lowering their GHG footprint. The company said the factory now has the capacity to print sufficient components for up to two homes per day, and this enables them to complete a home in “often less than a week”.
This is an important development, as it makes the notion of 3D printed homes a bit more eco-friendly, which will attract buyers.
It also shows how combinations of technologies between companies can provide far more powerful solutions. While many 3DCP companies simply print concrete, here Mighty Buildings takes a step farther to provide a more sophisticated and complete solution.
Via Mighty Buildings and Honeywell
