Silver Coated Glass Window Wins Top Environmental Award
Alpen Energy Group's Fiberglass Window achieved a heat savings of R-20, equivalent to the heat rejection of 16 times greater than ordinary glass.
The fiberglass frame also provides the best thermal insulation mounting for Alpen's window glass, meeting the demands of heat-loss prevention in the US research huts high on the Antarctic plateau.
"In the past three years the production of high thermal reflectivity silver-coated glass has exploded, rising to over 85 percent," said Robert Clarke, president of the Alpen Glass Group in Boulder, Colorado. He said it has become almost irresponsible for a window company not to use silver as the increased cost is marginal and the performance is superior. Silver provides not only the highest thermal reflectivity, but also the highest transparency of any of the sputtered metals without the color change found in other sputtered metals. "If you want high light transmission in the human eye spectrum and heat reflection also, then silver is overwhelmingly the best material to do that," Clarke added. The consumption of silver for low E-glass residential windows in 2006 exceeded 200,000 ounces.
Other companies report excellent sales as well. The Cardinal Glass Co., www.cardinalcorp.com , a major supplier of residential glass for windows and doors, sold 60 percent of glass with sputtered silver. The Viracon Co., www.viracon.com, a producer of curtain wall, storefront, and nonresidential glass, sold nearly 40 percent of its production as sputter-coated silvered glass.
Extremely thin silver coatings, invisible to the human eye, are produced by sputtering silver on glass or polyester film using a well-established coating process conducted in a vacuum. For the highest heat rejection, the insides of the front and back glass are sputter-coated, and sheets of polyester film are hung in between.
Clarke notes that silver can be applied in layers to windows with great precision offering different degrees of heat transmission, all invisible to the human eye. This control permits silver-coatings to be custom layered to meet a window's specific location. For example, windows to be installed in Florida would have different layers than those installed in Wisconsin. Windows of different layers could also be placed in the same building for the side facing north compared to those facing south.
Source - The Silver Institute, June 2008
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