Insulation II

Improving indoor air quality is a primary goal for green building.  Many products, especially new products, in both residential and commercial buildings emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including formaldehyde.  Indoor air quality can be improved by reducing VOC levels.  

Georgia-Pacific has been doing research and development for over 20 years to learn how to reduce product formaldehyde emissions to improve indoor air quality by eliminating emissions at the source.   Studies are done on-site in dynamic environmental chambers per ASTM D 5116-97 and in large chambers per ASTM E1333-96.  Recent studies have clearly demonstrated that it is possible to SIGNIFICANTLY reduce product formaldehyde emissions from numerous commonly used consumer products including fiberglass insulation using a new patent pending innovative technology.   These results have been verified by Air Quality Sciences, a third party testing organization recognized worldwide as an expert in indoor air quality. 

Products treated with this new, innovative technology meet the highest Green Guard certification standards and may qualify for LEED credits.  Applications for product listings are being submitted to various green product listing services to facilitate inclusion of these products in green building projects. Some of these listing services include California High Performance Schools (CHPS), Green Guard, Green Spec, etc. as well as more traditional product listing services such as ARCOM MASTERSPEC.

The presentation will focus on the effectiveness of this new/innovative technology, testing methodologies, the lessons learned and experiences gained using the technology, how manufacturers can incorporate this technology into their processes, the various products that can be improved with the technology, where these products are available, and where the audience can learn more about the technology.

This presentation will interest a wide audience including product manufacturers, architects, specifiers, builders, contractors, consumers, and specialists on technical advisory boards to the green building industry. 

Growing public awareness about the adverse effects of synthetic materials on the environment together with regulations, such as European end-of-life vehicle regulations, have led to an emphasis on environmentally friendly industries within our consumer society (Kavelin, 2005). Eco-friendly nonwoven composites composed of plant fibers and biodegradable polymers have some distinctive advantages over petro-based non-biodegradable composites such as lower weight, lower price, better crash absorbency and heat (Olesen, & Plackett, 1999) and sound insulation properties (Huda et al, 2004).

One interesting approach to investigating the technology is to search for solutions to the problems emerging from the progress of the technology. Similar to environmental pollution, noise is among the major problems emerging from technological progress (Shoshani, 1990. Noise is an increasing public health problem. To give an example, noise in the passenger compartment of vehicles which is generated by tires, road, traffic, and the engine interferes with the speech, induces driver fatigue, and affects safety (Parikh et al, 2006). Technical solutions for noise control can be classified in three groups. The primary methods concern modifications and alterations to the noise source itself. Secondary solutions concern measures which impede propagation of sound from the source to the human. Tertiary noise control is directly applied to the receiver such as ear plugs, earmuffs, etc. Hence, treatment of the noise path is conceptually the simplest and the most common approach in noise reduction is secondary noise control (Kuttruff, 2007).

In this research, eco-friendly nonwoven composites are compared to the conventional synthetic equivalents in terms of noise reduction. Sound absorption and sound transmission loss of nonwoven composites of hemp-PLA versus glassfiber-PP are measured. The effects of the fiber type, fiber size, layering sequence of fiber webs and the effect of compression molding which is often applied in shaping of nonwovens for applications such as automotive use is determined.