Cleantech companies from around the world have gathered in Brussels this week to show off their wares and services in the home of the European Union.

Cleantech Forum XVII kicked off today with a keynote from Björn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

In addition to speakers from a number of other companies and groups in the field, there are 16 presenting firms, with some of those firms representing very different parts of the cleantech market.

The forum is organized by the Cleantech Group, the parent company of Cleantech.com.

The growing field of green construction is represented by two companies at the forum, Scotland's Environmental Building Partnership, and Germany's TerraElast.

TerraElast has developed an environmentally friendly pavement solution without crude oil components for road, sidewalk, and yard construction.

Edinburgh-based Environmental Building Partnership is marketing a dynamic insulation product, called the Energyflo cell, that acts as a ventilation source, heat exchanger and air filter.

Take a look at an Energyflo cell here >>

Environmental Building Partnership is a spinout company of the University of Aberdeen, where the dynamic breathing building, or DBB, technology was developed.

The system is currently being tested by a family in the suburb of Balerno.

"It's a house that's been built by a developer here in Scotland, and it has about 150 monitoring points up in the roof that are gathering a lot of data on the overall performance of the dynamic breathing building system," Paul Smith, CEO of the partnership, told Cleantech.com.

Smith said traditional insulation can use up valuable floorspace by using thick walls, and can deteriorate the indoor environment by trapping heat indoors in the summer months.

"What our product does is reverses all of that," he said. "If you pass air across the thermal barrier, it picks up the heat that is held in that thermal barrier and then by ducting it and feeding it back into the interior of the building, you increase the internal temperature by the amount of heat you've recovered."

Smith said that means you can reduce the amount of energy that you need to maintain a level of comfort in the house, reducing fuel costs and ultimately reducing the carbon footprint of the building.

He said, "The science works equally well if you're trying to keep warm inside the building versus cold outside, or conversely where you're trying to keep cool inside the building versus warm outside."

The Energyflo cells are made from expanded polystyrene, with holes along the surface to encourage air to move through the center of the cell. Inside is a filter membrane to clean out particulate pollution.

The company said the system could be used in new builds or as part of a retrofit on existing buildings.

In addition to the home in Balerno, the company just made its first commercial shipment of Energyflo cells to Al Hamad Contracting in Dubai, where the cells will be used in an apartment complex.

Attending the forum from Montreal is Sofame Technologies (TSX: SDW), a manufacturer of commercial-industrial heat recovery equipment.

Sofame, which stands for Solution for Achieving Maximum Eco-efficiency, said its products can extract up to 99 percent of heat from flue gases depending on the application, as well as from wastewater, and return the energy in the form of high temperature hot water or pre-heated make-up air.

The company has installed its units at a number of hospitals, universities and airports, with the equipment offering a particular advantage for air traffic control at Trudeau International Airport in Montreal.

Because of the plume in winter months that comes out of the heating facility, the Trudeau airport had to locate the facility far from the tarmac so that it wouldn't interfere with tower operations.

Using Sofame's equipment, the heating facility was moved right into the main terminal, avoiding the need to transport the hot air through approximately a mile of pipes.

The Trudeau system uses four of Sofame's Percotherm units of 450 horsepower each. The Percotherm is a direct-contact condensing stack economizer which recuperates the residual heat contained in a boiler's flue gas and transfers the heat to a cold water stream.

Check out a diagram of the Percotherm here >>

Other presenting companies include AppleWind, Bio Pure Technology, EnviroTower USA, PowerGenix, and TD Light Sweden.

The Cleantech Group said the Brussels forum, which wraps up on Wednesday, is expected to pull in more than 400 investors, entrepreneurs, corporate leaders and policymakers.