A study on environmental impact of insulation thickness of poultry building walls

Highlights: • Determining the optimum insulation thicknesses for poultry buildings. • Evaluating energy savings for different fuels and different insulation materials. • Estimating the reduction of CO₂ emissions for four cities in different climate zones. • Determining the payback periods for different regions, insulation materials and fuels. In this paper, the optimum insulation thicknesses, energy savings, payback periods and emission rates of CO₂ were determined for poultry buildings in the cities of Antalya, Samsun, Ankara and Erzurum, located in different climates of Turkey. The calculations were made considering five different fuels (coal, fuel-oil, natural gas, LPG and electricity) and two different insulation materials, extruded polystyrene (XPS) and expanded polystyrene (EPS). As a result of this study, it was determined that XPS insulation materials offered an optimum thickness ranging from 1.20 to 8.10 cm, provided an energy savings between 15.38% and 69.90%, and required payback periods between 3.02 and 0.90 years, while EPS insulation materials offered an optimum thickness ranging between 2.00 and 11.80 cm, provided an energy savings between 21.82% and 70.61%, and required payback periods between 2.64 and 0.78 years, depending on the cities and fuel types. The lowest values of reduction of CO₂ emission (39.82%) were obtained for Antalya when XPS and natural gas are used as optimum insulation material while Erzurum has the highest value (83.98%) for EPS and LPG.