Cardboard-Based Packaging Materials as Renewable Thermal Insulation of Buildings: Thermal and Life-Cycle Performance
M. Cˇekon*, K. Struhala and R. Slávik Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Centre AdMaS, Antonínská 548/1, 601 90 Brno-strˇed, Czechia
Received November 14, 2016; Accepted February 23, 2017
Cardboard-based packaging components represent a material that has significant potential as a renewable source for exploitation in buildings. This study presents the results of thermal and environmental analyses of existing packaging materials compared with standard conventional thermal insulations. Experimental measurements were performed to identify the thermal performance of studied cardboard packaging materials. Real-size samples were experimentally tested in laboratory measurements. The thermal resistance and conductivity of all the analyzed samples were measured according to the procedure indicated in the ISO8032 standard. A life-cycle assessment according to ISO 14040 was also performed to evaluate the environmental impacts related to the production of these materials. The results show that cardboard panels are a material with thermal and environmental properties on par with contemporary thermal insulations. Depending on their structure, the measured thermal conductivity varies from 0.05 to 0.12 W·m –1 ·K –1 and their environmental impacts are much lower than those of polyisocyanurate foam or mineral wool.
ABSTRACT:
KEYWORDS: Cardboard, thermal insulation, thermal performance, environmental impacts, life-cycle assessment, packaging industry
currently available in the building sector [6]. Generally the public focus is on common thermal insulation sys- tems that are often promoted by various subsidy pro- grams, like Czech New Green Savings [7]. However, at the same time, the field of novel building materials with above average insulation properties is develop- ing rapidly. In order to find new ways to optimize energy consumption and mitigate the environmental impacts of structural solutions and building materials, attention is being focused on the exploitation of recent interdisciplinary findings. The starting point for the presented analysis was the fact that the contemporary packaging industry offers materials with interesting features: simplicity of production, thermal and acoustic properties and presumably also low environmental impacts related to the reuse of paper waste and recyclability of card- board-based materials (CBMs). These features make corrugated fiberboard (CFB) or honeycomb fiberboard (HFB) an attractive alternative to commonly used ther- mal insulation materials. The potential use of CBMs in the construction industry has already been addressed in recently published works of several authors. This study follows the works of Asdrubali et al. described
1 INTRODUCTION Currently, building energy efficiency is being empha- sized in developed countries around the world as one of the ways for reducing climate change. One of the newest legal documents striving to support cli- mate change mitigation is the recently ratified Paris Agreement [1], which demonstrates a global commit- ment to move towards a low carbon economy [2]. A key document in this regard in the European Union (EU) is Directive 2010/31/EU [3], which denotes that buildings in the EU should be built or renovated as near-zero energy buildings [4] with lowest possi- ble environmental impacts after 2020 [5]. One of the simplest ways of complying with these requirements is by reducing heat loss through the building enve- lopes, which is synonymous with improving the ther- mal properties of the building envelopes. This can be achieved by adding a sufficient amount of thermal insulation. Many types of insulation materials are
*Corresponding author : cekon.m@fce.vutbr.cz
DOI: 10.7569/JRM.2017.634135
CC BY-NC-ND - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License This license allows users to copy, distribute and transmit an article, adapt the article as long as the author is attributed, the article is not used for commercial purposes, and the work is not modified or adapted in any way. © 2017 by M. Cˇekon, et al. This work is published and licensed by Scrivener Publishing LLC.
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J. Renew. Mater. Supplement June 2017
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