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Content archived on 2024-05-14

Utilisation of European wool as insulation material

Objective

The thermal building insulation is currently realised by using materials such as fibre-glass or rock wool; it is envisaged to replace fibre-glass or rock wool by wool and to adapt European wool production and processing conditions for this new application.

The utilisation of wool as a thermal insulation material in buildings opens the perspective of new and alternative outlets to the European wool, at the moment where one observes a stagnation of its traditional markets. If wool growers can answer to the requirements about wool qualities necessary for the building sector, the price of their wool will also increase. It are incontestably the perspectives of the large potential market of thermal insulation that confers to the research project its most evident economical interest. But wool as such needs to be improved. First farming conditions should be adapted and secondly wool transformation industry should develop the needed processing to confer better flameproofing, mothproofing and rotproofing to the fibre.

The first goal of the project is to inform farmers and to help them to reach the wool quality needed for this new technical application of wool. The first industrial goal will consist in the development of an economic scouring process for wools. The second industrial goal, that will constitute an important part of the project, will consist to define the most economic processing methods and the most respectful of the environment, so that this processed wool will be resistant to microorganisms, to moths and to burning. The third goal is to find carding, needling and resin treatment conditions to optimise the insulation properties of the material.

The project is realised in collaboration of a wool grower association, a collector of wool, a wool scourer, a manufacturer of isolation panels, and a textile laboratory.

Glass materials should be replaced because they have following drawbacks : null humidity absorption leading to condensation, that become propitious to the development of merula; production of glass dust or microfibres of rock wool, (and release of toxic chemical vapours) with associated health problems, relatively similar to asbestos; problem of disposal in dump, due to lack of biodegradability of these materials consisting of composites of glass, foils and synthetic resins.

Wool is very good alternative to glass because of the following advantages : the fibre natural crimp, that allows the manufacture of a ventilated insulation product and hence the utilisation of wool as thermal and phonic insulation material, excellent thermal isolation properties, fast absorption and release of humidity allowing damping of temperature peaks namely in roofs, dimensional stability once .fixed natural resistance to burning up to 600øc, highly reversible compressibility is an advantage for transportation, compostable and completely mineralisable, the production of dust is not a problem with wool with respect to the brittle mineral fibres because wool is highly elastic and if it happened, the inhalation of wool dust by the organism would not present the same health hazard because wool is a soft non irritating proteinic material of natural origin.

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Funding Scheme

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Coordinator

Traitements Textiles sa
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Rue de Limbourg 145
4800 VERVIERS
Belgium

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Total cost

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Participants (2)

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