Our website is currently undergoing maintenance. Article records and full texts remain available. Submissions can be made through the Editorial Manager.
Insulating Foams and Dense Geopolymers from Biochar By-Products
R. Farges, A. Gharzouni, B. Ravier, P. Jeulin, S. Rossignol
Abstract
Pyrolysis is an innovative environmentally-friendly process to thermally treat biomass residues at low temperatures and in the absence of oxygen without releasing suspended particles, smoke or greenhouse gases. The obtained solid residue is called biochar. The aim of this work is to characterize four biochar by-products and to evaluate the feasibility of biochar-based geopolymer materials. For this, four types of biochar by-products, produced from wheat straw, miscanthus and wood, under different pyrolysis conditions were studied. First, the physical and chemical properties of the biochar by-products were determined. Structural data were obtained with infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction. Then a feasibility study of consolidated materials and foams was initiated. The results show that the biochar by-product is essentially chemically composed of silicon, potassium and calcium. Differences are observed depending on the type of biomass used to obtain the biochar by-product. Geopolymer binders were successfully synthesized from biochar by-products and a metakaolin. Furthermore, biochar by-product-based geopolymer foams were obtained using silica fume without metakaolin. The obtained materials exhibit low thermal conductivity values (≈ 0.13 W/mK), which suggests their use for insulation applications.
Keywords
Biochar, FTIR, geopolymer, foams, thermal conductivity
Göller Verlag GmbH · info@goeller-verlag.de · Site Notice · Privacy · Terms