Innovative insulation panels from waste as row material for building applications in a circular economy perspective

In building applications, the use of recycled waste materials from industrial and agricultural processes is becoming a promising solution in order to reduce the environmental impact. The aim is to fabricate panels with good thermo-acoustic properties able to limit heat losses and to reduce energy consumption in a circular economy perspective. In this scenario, recycled waste panels consisting of rice husk, cork scraps, end-life tires, coffee chaff, waste paper, textile fiber mats, and wool fiber scraps were produced by gluing and pressing the raw material. Thermal performance of rice husk non-conventional material never used for building application industry is in the same order of magnitude of many traditional insulating systems, such as cork scraps panels; other panels made of waste paper are characterized by very low values of thermal conductivity. Glued rice husk is characterized by higher sound absorption coefficient values than loose material. However, the best absorption coefficient trend is obtained for wool scraps and waste paper panels. Considering the production process, the best environmental performance was obtained for rice husk and coffee chaff panels, due to the neglecting impacts of their reuse as coproducts of other chains.