Pinus pinaster tannin/furanic foams: Part II. Physical properties

• We formulated foams with Pinus pinster tannins.
• We characterized physical properties of these new foams: mechanical resistance, microstructure and cells sizes, thermal conductivity.
• We found a corresponding thermal conductivity predictive model.
• We found the relationship between thermal conductivity, temperature and humidity of tannin-based foams.

Foams with procyanidin-type tannins have been developed recently, more particularly with Pinus pinaster tannins. Mechanical properties in compression were tested. Thus, different thermal conductivity prediction models were compared with the experimental results. It was found that Glicksman model is the most suitable to predict radiative conductivity. The structure and cells size was determined by scanning electron microscopy. This paper gives for the first time physical properties of P. pinaster tannin-based foams and suggests the best thermal conductivity predictive model to use for organic foams according to the type of cells structure observed.