Research on New Structures to Replace Polystyrene used for Thermal Insulation of Buildings

Abstract

The paper proposes new structures to replace the polystyrene, which is well known to be a toxic and inflammable material, non-biodegradable, used on a large scale for residence and civil thermal insulation and for packaging. The proposed structures are intended to be light structures, easy to manipulate, easy to be cut at the sizes needed, compact enough to not be damaged during the transport or during the mounting time, easy to fix on the building walls and of course with similar thermal insulating properties as polystyrene. First agglomerated composites were proposed. The materials used in these structures are green and biodegradable, found as inserts of wood (flakes or fibers) and textiles (wool or jute) and binders as wheat flour, clay or ecological acrylic copolymers. The density and thermal conductivity coefficient were determined for each structure and compared with the expanded and extruded polystyrene values and finally the more appropriate structures were recommended. To some of the structures flakes of polyethylene were added, in order to constitute a steam barrier of the new product. The addition of the polyethylene proved to be a disadvantage for the thermal insulation property of the structure and also for its compactness and reliability. The agglomerated composites mentioned above were pressed at a normal temperature (20-22 degrees C) and conditioned at a temperature of 40-50 degrees C. Two other structures were also proposed in this paper for the same purpose: a sandwich one, obtained after pressing it at 200 degrees C, containing jute, wood fibers and polyethylene granules for the core and beech wood veneers for the faces and a panelled board made of waste of polyethylene and jute core and fiberboard faces.