Engineering Sustainable Waste Wool Biocomposites with High Flame Resistance and Noise Insulation for Green Building and Automotive Applications

Abstract

Short wool fibers are unsuitable for most of the high value fiber applications but have excellent thermal insulation and other properties. Previous studies have developed composites with a low proportion of wool, flame-retarding additives which increase the cost and are therefore not sustainable. In this study, low-cost wool-polypropylene (PP) composites containing up to 90% wool fibers with PP fibers as the matrix was compression molded and compared against commercially available false ceiling tiles. The composites had the best flame retardancy of V0, thermal conductivity in the range of 0.058–0.083 W/mK and noise absorption co-efficient of up to 0.86. Wool-PP composites had excellent thermal stability until 250°C with a weight loss as low as 1.2%. The highest water absorption of the sheep wool-PP composites after 24 h was 34% (w/w) as opposed to 84% for the gypsum board. Potential applications of wool-PP composites include automotive, building interior and other end-uses.

Keywords

• biocomposites
• reinforcement
• polypropylene
• sheep wool
• insulation