Since mineral fibre insulations are suspected to cause cancer, more and more house biulders are asking for harmless, biogene insulation materials. Flax ist one of those rare domestic fibre crops which offer a sufficient potential of raw material supply. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the possibilities of changing the thermal conductivity of flax fibre insulations by changing their fibre properties. Therefore various techniques of harvesting the flax straw, processing the flax fibre and producing insulation material are used on different varieties of oil seed flax and fibre flax. It has been found out that the thermal conuctivity of flax fibre mats is depending on their density and on the lengths and diameter of their fibres - similar to conventional insulation materials. The harvesting technique itself has no influence on the properties of the fibre. However, the fibre retting plays an important role in the later fibre processing, but a sufficient fibre quality can be produced by a shortened retting time of three to four weeks. The two modern processing techniques of the companies "Bahmer" and "Temafa" which have been tested, do not show any significant difference in the produced fibre quality. However, in comparable conditions the "Bahmer" technique is almost twice as expensive and demands twice as much energy. Concerning the further production, a carding machine, a needle machine and additionaly a thermobonding device are regarded to manufacture high quality insulation flax mats.
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Since mineral fibre insulations are suspected to cause cancer, more and more house biulders are asking for harmless, biogene insulation materials. Flax ist one of those rare domestic fibre crops which offer a sufficient potential of raw material supply. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the possibilities of changing the thermal conductivity of flax fibre insulations by changing their fibre properties. Therefore various techniques of harvesting the flax straw, processing the flax fibre an...
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