Perspectives of Insulating Biodegradable Composites Derived from Agricultural Lignocellulosic Biomass and Fungal Mycelium: A Comprehensive Study of Thermal Conductivity and Density Characteristics

Abstract

The research suggests a production method of insulating composites created from lignocellulosic agricultural biomass with fungal mycelium as a binder agent and offers a deeper investigation of their thermophysical properties. Particularly, the samples were meticulously evaluated for density and thermal conductivity. The function was built on the suggestion by the authors regarding the thermal conductivity-weight ratio indicator. The metric was initially introduced to assess the correlation between these parameters and was also applied to qualitatively evaluate the biocomposite among other commonly used natural insulations. An applied polynomial trend analysis indicated that the most effective densities for the wheat, hemp, and flax, which were 60, 85, and 105 kg·m−3 respectively. It was determined that the optimal density for wheat and hemp composites corresponded to values of 0.28 and 0.20 W−1·kg−1·m4·K of the coefficient, respectively. These values were superior to those revealed in other common natural insulating materials, such as cork, cotton stalks, hempcrete, timber, etc. As a result, the proposed insulating material may offer numerous opportunities for application in industrial settings of civil engineering.