Gentiel Acar, the 2023 Sustainability Award winner, still works with standards

Last year, Gentiel Acar won the NBN Sustainabilty Award, part of the Flemish Thesis Award. This for his thesis on the reuse of mineral wool insulation. He looks back, explains what the award meant to him and how he works with standards today.

With the Sustainability Award, NBN highlights theses that deal with sustainability. The themes here can be diverse: technology, economics, social sciences, law... Last year's winner was Gentiel Acar, then a master's student in civil engineering and architecture at Ghent University. His groundbreaking thesis dealt with the reusability of rock wool insulation from flat roofs. Currently, Genitiel continues his innovative research as a doctoral student and scientific researcher at UGent. We spoke to him about his award and how he uses standards in his current scientific work. ‍

Learning to pitch through the NBN Sustainability Award

What did the award mean to you?
Gentiel: "I learned a lot through it. After my nomination, I had to write an article,describing my research in a short and low-key way. That's how you learn to translate your topic to people without much prior knowledge. And at the event itself we had to pitch our research in one minute in front of a jury of experts. Also very instructive. The latter also turned out to be important for later, because in order to win a grant for my research I will soon have to pitch in front of an international jury."

What did you find most valuable about winning the award?
"After I won the award, articles about my research appeared in my municipality's local press and in technical journals. As a result, I received emails from people in the field who wrote to me telling me that they were emasculating old insulation panels for their project or had also reused insulation materials, which gave me case studies for my research. A fine and important by-product of the award."

Digging out standards for old and new insulation materials

Do you still use standards in your research?
"Yes, I use standards for the tests I do on insulation materials, to determine how they still perform. So I use them as testing standards and they are very important in every step of my research. The first step in that is literature review: reading about the standards. The second step is testing performance according to the standards in the literature. And the third step is seeing how we can use the used insulation in a new application. In which we also determine what conditions and standards the materials must meet in that new application."

Can you give an example of how you work with standards?
"XPS insulation boards,for roofs, floors and walls, must be water resistant, so a first test is whether recycled XPS is also waterproof. Through literature research, I find out what the standard is for water resistance of a new insulation material. Then I carry out tests based on that standard for the XPS insulation boards I use, to see how they perform on a number of parameters described in the standard. Similarly, I also test, for example, the thermal and mechanical performance of not only XPS, but also PUR, PIR, EPS and mineral wool insulation boards."

Free account through Ghent University

Do you recommend that people in your field work with standards?
"Yes I do. Standards are a framework for what exists today. If you want to do relevant research as a researcher or if you want to have a good business model as Organisation , it's better to use today's standards. For a new field, such as the reuse of insulation materials, it is altogether better to work within that existing framework. It makes your research a lot more credible and stronger. The same goes when you write a business model to market those materials. I don't even see how you would do it without standards; they are inescapable."

What are the benefits of NBN for you?

"The great advantage of NBN is that, as a student and academic staff member, I have free access to all standards. Through my UGent account, I consult and compare old and new standards for my research. Especially for old materials, it is interesting to see what the standard was then and what it is now. There are always many tabs open on my computer with standards." (laughs)

Big ambitions for sustainability

Finally, do you have any tips for the participants in this year's NBN Sustainability Award?
"Clearly express to the jury the interest and enthusiasm you have for your topic, as well as your ambitions for it. And thirdly, highlight what it can mean for companies or for further research in the field of future sustainability. With me, the latter was very clear, but sometimes that's less the case and you have to give it explicitly."