Sustainable Lightweight Insulation Materials from Textile-Based Waste for the Automobile Industry

Abstract

Globally, automotive manufacturers are looking for ways to produce environmentally sustainable and recyclable materials for automobiles to meet new regulations and customer desires. To enable the needs for rapid response, this study investigated the feasibility of using waste and virgin wool fibres as cost-effective and sustainable alternatives for automotive sound and heat insulation using a chemical-free approach. Several properties of the currently available commercial automotive insulators were investigated in order to facilitate the designing of green wool-based needle-punched nonwoven materials. The effect of fibre diameter, nonwoven surface, layer structure, thickness, and area density on sound absorption and thermal resistance was investigated. The results suggested that the wool nonwoven materials, fabricated using waste and virgin wool fibres, possessed extremely efficient acoustic and thermal insulating properties comparable with the currently used commercial synthetic insulating materials. Besides, the wool nonwoven materials showed identical antibacterial and antifungal properties with a greater biodegradation rate (50%) than that of the commercial synthetic insulating materials. Hence, this study showed that natural wool fibres have the potential to be used as green, lightweight, and sustainable materials in the automobiles, while they qualify for Reuse–Recycle and Reuse–Recover purposes at the end-of-life of vehicles.

Graphene oxide incorporated waste wool/PAN hybrid fibres

“…In production of electronic devices, the development of electrically conductive fibres has led to the fabrication and utilisation of textiles in smart applications (E-Textiles). Compared to the metal-based conductors, the textile-based smart materials are superior due to the unique characteristics such as lightweight, flexibility, and resistance to biological–chemical corrosive materials 4 – 8 . Several research works have already reported the production of electrically conductive fibres using both natural and petroleum-based resources 4 , 6 , 9 .…”

Effect of Wood Fiber Surface Treatment on the Properties of Recycled HDPE/Maple Fiber Composites

“…However, the use of 100% recycled materials is still difficult due to various technical difficulties; in general, there is no exact knowledge of the composition and properties of the materials because they do not come from the same source, which implies that they have differences in molecular weights, transition temperatures, particle sizes, melt index, and even the type of additives or impurities they contain [3,5]. Even so, the formulation of composite materials is an interesting option, and the scientific community is focused on the use of virgin [9][10][11][12][13] and recycled [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] polymers as matrices for the production of natural fiber/plastic composites (NFPC) in order to reduce the polymer content and find added-value applications for these wastes (plastics and natural fibers) that can lead to more sustainable solutions. This combination offers several advantages such as better management of natural resources and a suitable way to eliminate plastic waste.…”

A Review on the Production Methods and Applications of Graphene-Based Materials

“…At present, the emphasis is on application of lightweight but strong materials in various structural engineering industries, especially in the automotive, aerospace, and marine industries [ 275 , 276 , 277 , 278 ]. This requirement reduces the parts weight and the amount of fuel required, resulting in considerable reduction in costs and fuel consumption.…”