Objective
The demand for healthy live and habitation and innovative natural building materials has increased substantially during the last 10 years. Architects promote green building design and sustainable architecture, people ask for materials that are not damaging to health. Due to the EU White Paper on the Strategy for a future Chemicals Policy (2001), many of the currently toxic building materials including common plaster material with toxic additives will no longer be acceptable. The use of unhealthy cement, lime or gypsum based plasters can be substituted through earth plasters reinforced with cattail fibres, exceeding all technical performances of conventional plasters. True earth plaster has very positive effects on indoor climate, health and the positive charisma of a building, and is produced in a complete sustainable manner. It regulates air-moisture and temperature, absorbs pollutants, prevents mould, is renewable, recyclable, energy efficient and durable. Despite of the high potential market and the unbeatable positive effects of earth plaster, most earth plaster producers nowadays are not able to serve profitable a national or international market.
Main reasons are (a) missing professional technology able to produce high quantities of high quality earth plaster in an efficient way, competitive to the conventional plasters and (b) unsatisfying quality of existing earth plasters: large cracks during drying process, fungus grow due to wrong processed additives, relatively rough wall surfaces. The aims of the proposed project are (1) to develop, to test and to optimize a high quality innovative and cost effective healthy indoor earth plaster reinforced with cattail fibre, (2) to develop and to test a highly technical automated prototype plant with minimum maintenance, which dramatically improves the production process of common earth plasters, in order (3) to improve the competitiveness of earth plaster products on the national and international plaster market.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwater treatment processeswastewater treatment processes
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologymycology
- engineering and technologyenvironmental biotechnologybioremediationcompost
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
- engineering and technologycivil engineeringarchitecture engineeringsustainable architecturesustainable building
Call for proposal
FP6-2004-SME-COOP
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