HEAT INSULATION MATERIALS OF POROUS CERAMICS, USING PLANT FILLER

Constantly growing energy prices and concerns about energy supplies in the future, as well as the requirements for regulating gas emissions that produce the greenhouse effect, directs us to search and realize activities allowing the reduction of energy consumption and to reach a higher energy efficiency level. Heat insulation is one such procedure for energy efficiency improvement, by reducing energy consumption in the construction field. New ecological heat insulation materials, which are made from local raw materials, can serve as an alternative for heat insulation materials already existing in the market, using clay as a binder in its production, but hemp and flax and shove are used as burnable fillers, thus obtaining material with the necessary heat and acoustic insulation qualities, as well as fire-resistance and chemical stability in an aggressive environment and providing to the development of industries in Latvia. In order to reduce thermal conductivity of ceramic materials, it is necessary to increase its porosity which can be realized by the usage of gas forming additives, for example, calcite and magnesite, but the second variant is to add burned out additives thus forming porous ceramics. Within this research, agricultural waste is used for the production of porous ceramics, which have not been sufficiently used for the production of construction materials with high added value in Latvia. The aim of the research is to develop porous ceramic materials, using plant burnable filler with certain properties due to their resistance and density, based on world achievements, as well as the experimental investigations. In the present paper, the evaluation of practically obtaining material which could be used for heat insulation of buildings has been done. The porous ceramic materials with burnable plant filler are being developed in the present investigation. The dependences, the mechanical and physical properties of porous ceramics are defined in accordance with the amount of filler, glass and the amount and size of pores, have been performed.