Thermal insulation material production from packaging wastes

ABSTRACT Fast consumption habits have brought about the formation of packaging waste. For that reason, to minimize the amount of packaging waste, the share of recycling should be increased by developing different utilization areas. In this study, thermal insulation material was produced from raw waste LDPE and waste/virgin LDPE (90/10, 80/20, 70/30, 60/40 ve 50/50) mixtures at different rates by using Waste Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) packages. In the foaming studies, sodium bicarbonate and citric acid, which are environmentally friendly foaming agents, were used. Thermal insulation potentials of the samples were determined by thermal conductivity density, water absorption measurements. The thermal conductivity results were 0.043 W/m·K, 0.046 W/m·K and 0.061 W/m·K for waste, mixture (90/10) and virgin samples, respectively. These results show that the waste and mixture sample (90/10) have more using potential of thermal insulation material than the virgin LDPE sample. The pore structures of the samples were also examined with a stereo microscope. In order to provide flame retardant properties to the insulation material, dip coating technique was used with the waste material. In the preliminary experiments in the laboratory, waste clay and boric acid (AK/BA) gave the best result with 102 seconds. The thermal insulation material is in the extra flame retardant class according to the LOI results (>60), which is the combustion test. In addition, the life cycle analysis of the environmental impact of waste LDPE thermal insulation material and commercial thermal insulation materials has been made. Keywords: Packaging waste, LDPE, Foaming agents, Thermal insulation material, Life cycle assesment