Thermal insulating performance of wood-plastic biocomposite with rapeseed-oil based binder

Abstract

Due to encouragement of more efficient waste management and their reuse in the same or different industries, circular economy is currently widely promoted. Therefore, the utilization of renewable biomass or its waste/by-products for achieving higher sustainability and lower carbon footprint is a main concern. One of the areas to implement the objectives or circular economy and to lower negative environmental impact is for bio-based products to be used in wood-plastic composites (WPCs). Therefore, current study analysis the possibility to reuse forestry waste, i.e. wood scobs and wood bark, together rapeseed oil-based binder to obtain thermal insulating WPCs. During the study, it was obtained that the ratios of wood scobs/rapeseed binder and wood bark/rapeseed binder changes the main parameters of WPCS. The obtained products are characterized by the density ranging from 102 kg/m3 to 168 kg/m3 and thermal conductivity from 0.0412 W/(m·K) to 0.0523 W/(m·K) for wood scobs-based WPCs. While wood bark-based WPCs have the density in the range of (329÷378) kg/m3 and thermal conductivity – (0.0665÷0.0781) W/(m·K).