Windows for a brave new world

As a leading producer of thermally efficient doors and windows, one of the most powerful things JELD-WEN can do to benefit people and planet is to help reduce customers’ energy consumption while keeping their homes at a comfortable temperature.

Now, JELD-WEN is going one step further and innovating to make energy-efficient, multi-purpose glass for the windows of the future.

“Windows and doors are products we use and enjoy every day. They allow us to bring the outside in and help create happy, healthy environments. But, compared to a wall, they are less energy efficient,” says Dan Jacobs, vice president and general manager of window products at JELD-WEN. “Our goal at JELD-WEN is to make our windows as energy efficient as an insulated wall and we believe we have a path to get there.”

A typical window is, by nature, constantly “losing all the heat and all the cool,” says Yuxuan (pronounced You-shawn) Gong, a senior glass scientist at JELD-WEN. But what if we could flip that and not only make windows more efficient but also a net producer of energy rather than just an energy consumer?

“If you think about windows and doors, there’s an aesthetic factor, and there’s an energy-efficiency factor,” Yuxuan says. “Windows and doors could be a platform for a host of technologies.”

Sustainable, next-level glass

Yuxuan, who has a Ph.D. in glass science, doesn’t work in a lab, as you might expect. He works from a home office in Columbus, Ohio, where he dreams up ways to make glass more energy-efficient – and more useful. JELD-WEN already produces impact-resistant glass windows and doors for use in hurricane-prone areas. Yuxuan and his teammates are at work taking that to the next level.

“I work closely with our talented manufacturing team,” Yuxuan says. “Every single manufacturing site is, in fact, a lab for JELD-WEN research and development. We work together to understand how we can accelerate all the technologies we’ve built conceptually and make them into reality.

As always there’s a focus on sustainability. “We push our suppliers to use higher recycled content in the glass they provide us with and to lower their carbon emissions,” says Yuxuan. “Together, we’re building the future.”

The making of a glass scientist

Yuxuan Gong, now a senior glass scientist at JELD-WEN, has always been interested in glass as a material.

“After I graduated from high school in China, I started working for a company making light bulbs,” says Yuxuan, explaining his fascination with the process. “You take raw rocks, sand and chemicals and turn them into a molten liquid, blow it into a form and it becomes hard glass.”

He worked full-time at the light bulb factory while going to college in China, before moving to the United States and earning a master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. in glass science from Alfred University in upstate New York. He also earned a certificate in project management from Cornell University.

Before designing efficient windows and doors, Yuxuan designed glass for other familiar products – a bottle for Rolling Rock beer, a bottle for Skinny Girl wine and a windshield for Nissan.

Yuxuan previously worked at Owens Corning, where he developed scientific tools for use in optimizing the performance and manufacturing process of fiberglass. During his time there, he earned two patents on the use of fiberglass in the agricultural industry. He also developed a UV-sensitive glass enamel that can be printed on window glass. It’s transparent to the human eye, but birds can see colored patterns in the ultraviolet reflective glass and avoid flying into the window.

At JELD-WEN, Yuxuan and his teammates are working on ways to improve the efficiency of windows and to reimagine the window of the future.

“A window could be the connector to every aspect of your life,” he says. “I think that eventually – maybe two decades from now – that’s what’s going to happen.”