Engineering Sustainable Waste Wool Biocomposites with High Flame Resistance and Noise Insulation for Green Building and Automotive Applications

ABSTRACT

Short wool fibers are unsuitable for most of the high value fiber applications but have excellent thermal insulation and other properties. Previous studies have developed composites with a low proportion of wool, flame-retarding additives which increase the cost and are therefore not sustainable. In this study, low-cost wool-polypropylene (PP) composites containing up to 90% wool fibers with PP fibers as the matrix was compression molded and compared against commercially available false ceiling tiles. The composites had the best flame retardancy of V0, thermal conductivity in the range of 0.058–0.083 W/mK and noise absorption co-efficient of up to 0.86. Wool-PP composites had excellent thermal stability until 250°C with a weight loss as low as 1.2%. The highest water absorption of the sheep wool-PP composites after 24 h was 34% (w/w) as opposed to 84% for the gypsum board. Potential applications of wool-PP composites include automotive, building interior and other end-uses.

摘要

短羊毛纤维不适合大多数纤维应用，但具有优异的隔热性能. 先前的研究已经开发出羊毛、阻燃添加剂比例低的复合材料，增加了成本，而且无法持续. 在这项研究中，低成本羊毛-聚丙烯（PP）复合材料含有高达90%的羊毛纤维与PP纤维作为基质进行压缩成型，并与市售的假天花板瓷砖进行比较。复合材料的阻燃性最佳，V0，导热率在0.058-0.083 W/mK范围内，噪声吸收共效率高达0.86. 羊毛-PP复合材料具有出色的热稳定性，直到250 °C，重量损失低至1.2%。24小时后，绵羊羊毛PP复合材料的最高吸水率为34%（w/w），而石膏板的吸水率为84%. 羊毛PP复合材料的潜在应用包括汽车、建筑内饰和其他应用.

KEYWORDS:

• Biocomposites
• reinforcement
• polypropylene
• sheep wool
• insulation

关键词:

• 生物复合材料
• 加固
• 聚丙烯
• 羊毛
• 绝缘

Acknowledgments

Authors wish to thank the Center for Incubation, Innovation, Research and Consultancy for their support to complete this research. Dr. Narendra Reddy thankfully acknowledges the support from Department of Biotechnology, Government of India through the Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship.