Physical and thermal characterizations of insulation composite made of wood fibers

Currently, mineral fiber or cellular plastic insulation materials dominate the building construction market because of their relatively competitive price and low thermal conductivity properties; however, the environmental impacts of cellular plastic insulation materials during their whole life cycle are significantly higher. Additionally, the forestry sector in Canada generates approximately 5.38 × 106 oven-dried tons of wood product residues per year and there are opportunities to further process and use them as the raw materials for producing wood-based fiber insulation boards. The purpose of this study is to investigate the methods to utilize the woody residues and process them into wood fibers to form insulation boards. Additionally, an eco-friendly casein adhesive was chosen to bind the wood particles together. The boards were successfully formed and have thermal conductivity values ranging from 0.057 to 0.078 W/mK, based on different board densities and moisture contents, which satisfy the minimum requirement of the ASTM insulation standard. Thus, this study of forming wood-based fiber insulation boards shows opportunities of reducing the environmental impacts and reducing the building energy consumption due to heating or cooling at the same time.