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Abstract
The goal of this study is to understand the potentiality for recycled textiles to be used as environmental-friendly insulation materials and to understand the structure-property relationship of such insulation materials. To achieve these goals, a systematic study has been conducted to evaluate the recycling of used apparel to produce commercially feasible sustainable insulation products using nonwoven fabrication techniques with a biodegradable thermoplastic binder fiber (Sorona® or PLA). Produced materials showed very good insulation properties with maximum transmission loss of about 24 dB at around 1000 Hz and minimum thermal conductivity value of 0.049 W/mK, which are much better than those of commercially available insulation materials. Another study was conducted to understand effect of processing parameters on the properties of insulation materials. It was found that with the increase of bonding time and temperature, thickness decrease, whereas density increases, air permeability initially slightly increases, then decreases, acoustic insulation property increases, but thermal insulation property decreases.
A cradle to gate life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted to check the environmental impacts of produced insulation materials. The result showed that produced insulation materials (N1, N2) have overall very low environmental impacts compared to stone wool and natural flax.
An analytical model is proposed by combining and modifying Maxwell-Eucken model to predict thermal insulation properties. Tested results showed that experimental data agree with the predicted data with a percentage of difference less than 8.5%.
Insulation materials were also prepared utilizing 3D printing technology to check the effect of structural parameters on insulation properties as it is assumed that precise structural parameters produced by 3D printing technology would show accurate relation compared to nonwoven composites, which are irregular by nature. Results showed a similar effect of structural parameters on insulation properties that we had observed in nonwoven composites.
The overall systematic study of this dissertation revealed that produced insulation materials have very good potentiality to be used as environment-friendly building insulation materials and replace the commercially available ones. Waste textiles have potentiality to give another useful life before safely disposing of them in composting environments.