Sustainable insulation
Researchers at the Institute of Natural Products Engineering at TU Dresden (Germany; www.tu-dresden.de) have developed an insulating material made from recycled paper for shipping temperature-sensitive foods and medicines. As part of a research and development project, the fundamentals were laid for the production of ecologically sustainable fresh-food shipping packaging and thus for an alternative to styrofoam and plastic packaging.
As part of the research project, waste paper was processed using a special drying technique to produce fiber-based insulating elements. Functional tests under practical conditions have shown that the insulating elements developed are capable of replacing conventional insulating materials, such as styrofoam, due to their low thermal conductivity. “Due to the low thermal conductivity and higher heat storage capacity of cellulose, the insulating properties of the sustainable fiber mats even surpass those of most other materials,” says Thomas Schrinner, project coordinator at the chair of Wood Technology and Fiber Materials Engineering.