Sustainable Fire-Retardant, Thermal Insulating Biomass-Derived Foams for Green Buildings

Overview

Petroleum-based insulation foams make up a substantial portion of the global insulation market, yet they yield significant negative impacts on the environment. Current biobased alternatives that are up to 50% more expensive than conventional ones have a multitude of understudied chemical and mechanical problems that makes them unreliable proxies. This project aimed to create a novel lignocellulose-based foam with six main objectives: mechanical strength, fire retardancy, biodegradability, thermal insulation, hydrophobicity, and scalability. Through experimentation with various weight-percentages of biomaterials including fibres (aspen and hemp) and additives (nanoclay and silane), a “final foam” (chosen by its desirable density and volume shrinkage rate) was created and went through rigorous standardized testing (such as the UL-94 flammability test, R-value, Young’s Modulus, etc.) to prove the original six objectives were met. This project matters because it takes inexpensive biomaterials, never used in this combination before, to create foams for real-world application.

Awards (2)

• Silver Medal
• Selected for CWSF 2026

Competition history

• CWSF 2026 Curiosity & Ingenuity

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