Wood Waste-Based Thermal Insulation Foam for Building Energy Efficiency

Wood, a renewable resource with passive carbon sequestration abilities, has a history of use within construction materials because of its cheap, abundant, and sustainable nature; however, natural wood’s low porosity makes it an unfit candidate for readily producible and highly efficient thermal insulation materials , leading to a high overall thermal conductivity (> 0.1 W/(mK)). Furthermore, the fabrication process of wood-based building insulation materials generally involves chemical- and time-consuming drying methods (e.g., freeze-drying, solvent exchange, overnight curing), resulting in high manufacturing costs. In this work, we illustrate the development and characterization of sustainable wood waste-based thermal insulation foam fabricated through a rapid hot-pressing technique, demonstrating significant product tunability, manufacturing scalability, and time- and cost-efficiency. This method significantly improves the manufacturability of wood-based thermal insulation materials by eliminating solvents from the fabrication process. Performance characterization of wood waste-based thermal insulation foam exhibits a density of 0.2 g/cm³, thermal conductivity of 0.03 W/(mK), and compressive strength of ~1 MPa at 10% strain. This example of the quick development of efficient sustainable thermal insulation materials shows promise for addressing complex thermal transport challenges with applications in various sectors including electronics, manufacturing, buildings, and transportation.