A Comparison of Banana Fiber Insulation with Biodegradable Fibrous Thermal Insulation
Journal Title: American journal of Engineering Research - Year 2016, Vol 5, Issue 8
Abstract
Environmental concern about the disposal of discarded thermal insulation focused research in developing new and innovative biodegradable materials to facilitate and improve the thermal demands of society. Banana fiber is a lignocellulose material derived from the discarded tree trunk and can be a cheap, abundantly available, reliable, biodegradable and renewable raw material source. Thermal conductivity measurements on 50.4 mm thick slab-like banana fiber specimens showed characteristics consistent with that of fibrous thermal insulation. An empirical correlation developed to predict the apparent thermal conductivity variation with density and mean test temperature showed values within 4% of the experimental results. Comparison of the thermal conductivity at 25oC and at the optimum density for coconut fiber, sugarcane fiber and oil palm fiber with banana fiber indicated that they were all within the range of 0.02 W/m.K to 0.06 W/m.K for use as building thermal insulation. Of the four lignocellulose materials considered, banana fiber showed the lowest thermal conductivity value of 0.04415 W/m.K at a density of 70.4 kg/m3 compared to 0.0488 W/m.K at a density of 69.57 kg/m3 for coconut fiber, 0.0483 W/m.K at a density of 95.94 kg/m3 for sugarcane fiber and 0.0572 W/m.K at a density of 100.30 kg/m3 for oil palm fiber.
Authors and Affiliations
Krishpersad Manohar
Keywords
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