2024, Volume 70(74), Issue 3 (September), pp. 47 - 56

Advanced Wood Foam Production Technique as An Alternative Heat-Insulating Material for Building Construction

LUCIAN PĂUNESCU, Daily Sourcing & Research SRL Bucharest, Romania, lucianpaunescu16@gmail.com
ENIKÖ VOLCEANOV, National University of Science and Technology “Politehnica” Bucharest,  Faculty of Engineering in Foreign Language Bucharest, Romania, Metallurgical Research Institute SA Bucharest, Romania  

pages 47 - 56   Download
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13837887

Abstract
 The paper has tested an alternative heat-insulating material for building construction based on wood foaming. The wood waste chosen for this test was oak wood not used in other previous experiments presented in the literature. The purpose of the work is to replace the plastics currently used for the production of heat-insulating materials. Using ground wood waste, a suitable surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate), and distilled water, wet suspension was prepared, foamed by stirring and then dried at 80°C. Thus, it was obtained an optimal specimen with excellent heat-insulating properties (apparent density of 0.014 g·cm^-3, heat conductivity of 0.035 W·m^-1·K^-1). The compressive strength had a rather low value of 715 kPa, but satisfactory for the intended purpose. By comparison with other experimentally prepared wood foams, the oak wood foam properties fell within the performance required by the use of the new material as a thermal insulator in construction, being able to replace similar polymer-based materials.
Keywords: wood foam, oak wood, surfactant, heat-insulating property, heat conductivity.