Innovative panels with recycled materials: Thermal and acoustic performance and Life Cycle Assessment

Finally an initial Life Cycle Assessment of the proposed solutions was considered and compared to the performance of other replaceable insulating materials. Results showed that the panel composed by recycled papers and textile fibres causes relative large energy consumptions and a high global warming potential. The importance of this kind of insulation system is due to the use of recycled materials: both the waste paper and the TNT fibres should be disposed by means of a large use of energy. This way they will be re-used and the cost for the production of the panels is very low. A disadvantage of these panels could be their high density (about 433 kg/m3): the future step for this work will be the improvement of this new insulating type in order to obtain a competitive solution on the market. The manufacturing of lighter solutions will allow the panels to be more competitive on the market in terms of embodied energy and GHG emissions.