Sapropel as a Binding Material for Wood Processing Waste in the Development of Thermal Insulation Biocomposite

Abstract

When developing new innovative building materials, their performance characteristics as well as their environmental friendliness are important. It is difficult to produce a fully ecological material for building envelopes, because there is a lack of ecological binding materials on the market, good binding materials are very expensive, and cheaper ones have poorer adhesive properties and performance characteristics. In this work, natural organic sapropel was used as an ecological binder. Before use, an organic sapropel was additionally mechanically activated. Its activation efficiency was evaluated on the basis of consistency and tensile strength. Sapropel activation increased its consistency from 112 to 168 mm and its tensile strength from 466 to 958 kPa. Wood processing waste was used as a filler for the thermal insulation biocomposite. Additionally, the wood waste was chopped to regulate the density and main performance properties of the biocomposite. The density of the biocomposite was also regulated using different amounts of sapropel and the degree of compaction of the composite mixture. In this work, the influence of the amount of sapropel, the level of compression of the biocomposite mixture, and the size of the wood waste particles on the thermal conductivity and compressive stress of the biocomposite was analyzed. It was found that the compression level had the greatest influence on both the compressive stress and thermal conductivity, up to 12 times and 43.3%, respectively.

The Effect of Organic Lake Sediments (Sapropel) on the Properties and Biological Resistance of Unfired Clay Bricks

“…The lower-density composites best absorb the waves of 300-600 Hz frequency because sound absorption exceeds 0.5 for this frequency range [18]. V ėjelis et al [21] developed a thermal insulation biocomposite from sapropel and wood processing waste with lower thermal conductivity (0.0612 to 0.0659 W/(mK), and its compressive stress values varied from 0.414 to 1.051 MPa. The bulk density of such a biocomposite was 300 kg/m 3 .…”