OAK RIDGE, Tenn., May 24, 2016 -- Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been selected for funding negotiations for a competitive award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) that aims to develop a low-cost, multilayer, highly transparent and thermally insulating film for window applications.
The $2.54 million ORNL award is one of 14 ARPA-E projects that focus on improving the energy efficiency of commercial and residential buildings by developing window pane retrofits to reduce heat loss. ORNL is partnering with Madico Inc. and Georgia Institute of Technology to develop this technology.
"The funding will enable us to develop and demonstrate a ground breaking, energy saving film,” said Jaswinder Sharma, the project’s principal investigator.
Approximately 25 to 30 percent of residential buildings in the Northeast and Midwest still have single-pane windows. Though small in percentage, they result in a significant loss of heat during winter. Sharma and researchers in ORNL’s Energy and Transportation Science Division are creating a highly transparent, multilayer window film that can be applied onto single-pane windows to improve thermal insulation, soundproofing and condensation resistance
ORNL received its competitive award from ARPA-E’s Single-pane Highly Insulating Efficient Lucid Designs (SHIELD) program. The program seeks to develop cost-effective, innovative window coatings and windowpanes that could significantly improve the energy efficiency of existing single-pane windows.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy's Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit http://energy.gov/science/.
