A novel thermal insulation composite fabricated with industrial solid wastes and expanded polystyrene beads by compression method.

Building energy consumption and industrial solid wastes have attracted great concerns in recent years. A novel thermal insulation composite (NTIC) is prepared by combining industrial solid wastes with expanded polystyrene (EPS) beads for non-structural applications of building energy conservation. Industrial solid waste containing flue gas desulfurization (FGD) gypsum improves the fire resistance of NTIC samples and reduces the carbon footprint of the material as compared with similar insulation composites based on portland cement. In order to substantially reduce the density and thermal conductivity of NTIC samples, the proportion of industrial solid wastes should be decreased. However, significant quantities of large voids appear in the samples which leads to the difficulty of the shaping and sharp decrease of mechanical properties. Compression method was used to solve the above problem in this paper. The morphological characterization, physico-mechanical properties, water absorption, thermal conductivity and fire behavior of the NTIC samples with different compression ratios were studied. The results showed that density, mechanical properties, water absorption and thermal conductivity of the NTIC samples gradually decreased with the increase of EPS beads content. The samples with a compression ratio of 1.8 possessed preferable mechanical properties and lower water absorption than those with a compression ratio of 1.4 in the case of approximately same density due to many voids inside the latter. The thermal conductivity of samples was mainly determined by their density. There is no fire combustion for all the samples under the flame, which illustrated the NTICs in this paper possessed superior fire safety. • A novel thermal insulation composite was prepared by using a compression method. • An environmentally friendly cementitious composite was used. • The mechanical strength and thermal conductivity were positively linear with density. • The water absorption of NTIC samples could be reduced by adjusting compression ratio. • Flue gas desulfurization gypsum was beneficial to fire resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]