What’s vacuum glass？

Vacuum glass is newly developed glass products,astually it has very long history,even though it’s really new in the market,but is expected to be the best thermal insulation glass products in the future and replace the current insulated glass.This article will introduce the vacuum glass,its advantage and the market in the next years.

What’s vacuum glass?

Same as normal insulated glass,the vacuum glass is also made with 2 pieces single piece glass and spacer.The glass can be clear,low iron glass,silk screen glass,low-E coated glass,or even laminated glass.

The difference is ,0.3mm vacuum space between 2 piece glass.Traditional insulated glass has 6mm,9mm,12mm,16mm,and even 20mm air spacer between glass.To increase the insulated glass energy saving performance,Argon is usually filled to decrease around 0.2W/m2.k U value.

Vacuum glass has a 0.2-0.4mm vacuum space between 2 piece glass,some mineral supporting pillars are placed between the glass to ensure that the vacuum glass won’t contraction because of the vacuum space.

The sealed edge is made with glass powders or metals to ensure the high vacuum between the glass.

Why we use vacuum glass?

The biggest advantage and feature of vacuum glass is the vacuum space between glass,the vacuum space makes vacuum glass has below advantages:

1. Thermal insulation.

The high vacuum space can decrease the thermal transmission between the 2 side glass.Its thermal performance is 2-4 times that of insulated glass,6-10 times that of single piece glass,which can easily reach the high thermal insulation requirement of passive buildings.

The U value can be 0.4W/M2.K,the thermal insulation performance of 8.3mm(4+0.3V+4) vacuum glass is equal to 1.5M brick walls.

 

Below is the performance data of vacuum glass,here we can see clearly how excellent the vacuum glass thermal performance is.

Glass type	Low-e	U value	LT%	LR%	SC	Accoustic-Dbs
5TL+12A+5T	Double silver	1.63	68	11	0.44	32
5TL+12A+5T+5T+12A+5T	Double silver	1.25	61	12	0.4	35
5TL+0.3V+5T	Double silver	0.44	68	11	0.44	39
5TL+0.3V+5T	Single silver	0.55	78	12	0.67	39
5T+12A+5TL+0.3V+5T	Double silver	0.42	60	17	0.42	40
5T+12A+5TL+0.3V+5T	Single silver	0.52	70	18	0.59	40
5T+0.76PVB+5TL+0.3V+5T	Double silver	0.44	65	10	0.4	41
5T+0.76PVB+5TL+0.3V+5T	Single silver	0.54	76	11	0.58	41

Based on above chart,the vacuum glass U value is 0.4-0.5,even if made into insulated vacuum glass or laminated vacuum glass,the U value won’t decrease much.

Compared with double silver low-E 1.6W/M2.K,vacuum glass performance is only around 40% of that glass.

2. Sound insulation

The vacuum glass sound insulation reach 39mm,which is equal to triple laminated glass,and is higher than any glass products in the market now.

Normal insulated glass sound accoustic is around 33-36Dbs,while vacuum glass can reach 39mm.

Insulated glass cannot decrease the traffic noise much,because traffic noise is low frequency noise,which cannot be decreased by the air space between insulated glass.

While vacuum glass can decrease any noise can cause 39Dbs noise difference between indoor and outdoor.’

 

3. Low condensation point.

Because of the vacuum between glass,the condensation point of vacuum glass is -50℃.

So vacuum glass can be widely used in freezers and more home appliance which has low temperature.

4. Safety glass

The glass used for vacuum glass is temperature,which belongs to safety glass.The low temperature sealing technology also guarantee the temperature high strength and impact resistance.

Surface compression and fragile numbers comply with the tempered glass standard.Wind load,impact resistance all guarantee the high safety of tempered vacuum glass.

5. Light weight and simple structure

The vacuum space is only 0.3mm,which can be ignored.So vacuum glass can save the storage,logistic fees significantly.

Vacuum glass thickness is only 1/3 and even 1/4 that of insulated glass,the weight is 10kgs/m2 lighter.

Meanwhile based on same thermal insulation performance,vacuum glass can also decrease the aluminium profile and windows system thickness,which can save much for clients.

The overall costs of windows with vacuum glass and light thermal break aluminium windows is almost equal to triple glazed glass units and thick aluminium windows,while the saved energy is much higher.

6. Suitable for any area.

As we know the air inside insulated glass will expand if the glass is installed in high altitude areas,while in low altitude areas,insulated glass may shrink which will case visual distortion after glass installed.

The vacuum environment in vacuum glass ensures that vacuum glass won’t change and can be installed in anywhere.

7. Long lifetime.

The expected lifetime of vacuum is 25 years.The special sealing materials ensures high vacuum environment.Compared with normal insulated glass 10-15 years lifetime,vacuum glass lifetime can be 2 times longer.

Currently there’re still many problems in large scale production of vacuum glass,but the technology is developing and many Chinese enterprises are striving to improve the production efficiency and yield of vacuum glass.

Just like the low-E coated glass 20 years ago,vacuum glass is still new ,price is very high compared with currently large scaled used insulated glass,while we believe with the development of the production technology,the vacuum glass will replace insulated glass in the next 20-30 years and become the most popular energy saving glass.

In addition to further laminating and insulating process,vacuum glass can have better safety and thermal performance.

But currently the vacuum glass can only be flat,cannot drill holes on glass and cannot be made into curved glass,hope that with the development of vaccum glass technology,these shortage can be solved and been applied in more projects.

HaanGlas is your turnkey vacuum glass manufacturer and supplier in China,welcome contact us for more info.Beside vacuum glass,HaanGlas also offer complete architectural glass solutions,looking forward to hear from you soon.