Finding conditions in reprocessing of glass wool waste as a heat insulator

This research aimed to find the process of value adding for glass wool waste from the glass wool composite board used in the vehicle industry. The waste was reprocessed to be an insulator and to determine the suitable conditions for hot-press forming to create new materials having high thermal resistant properties. Firstly, the properties of the original board; the thermal resistances (R) and the noise absorption coefficients (NRC), were measured and were found averages of 0.9055 m2K/W and 0.3955, respectively. The reprocessing conditions were varied by 2 levels; high and low, of 5 control factors; density, thickness, pressure, temperature, and surface roughness. Three repeating processes for each condition were performed. The Design of Experiment (DoE) was the full factorials; 25 experiments, by using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to find main and interaction factors relating to the properties. From the ANOVA results with the alpha level of significance at 0.05, it was found that the main factors responding to the high values of the thermal resistance were the thickness and density. This resulted in the suitable conditions for the hot-press process of both the new smooth and rough pads with a density of 96 kg/m3 and a thickness of 25 mm. The R values of the new insulators were in between 0.88 - 0.98 m2K/W and, additionally, the high NRC values were also provided in between 0.46 - 0.49. These findings could be applied for wall designing, wall decorations and heat shields for indoor rooms and different types of buildings.