Preparation and Characterization of Insulating Panels from Recycled Polylaminate (Tetra Pak) Materials

Abstract

Eco-sustainability and the reuse of materials are highly topical issues. In fact, in recent years, much study and research has been developed on this aspect, making the eco-sustainability of materials a real need. Polylaminate containers, more commonly called Tetra Pak containers, represent the most used packaging in the world. This work proposes a new strategy for the reuse of discarded polylaminate containers in order to create panels that can be used in construction and in particular as insulating panels. The proposed thermal method has been optimized in terms of operating variables such as time, temperature, pressure, number of polylaminate sheets. The results obtained show that the proposed thermal method is suitable for obtaining panels with characteristics suitable for use in green building. The advantage of the thermal method is that it does not use chemical or other binders and moreover uses only and exclusively sheets of recycled polylaminate.