Sustainable Building Material: Recycled Jute Fiber Composite Mortar for Thermal and Structural Retrofitting

The construction sector requires a major part of the produced energy (around 36% globally) and emits the highest amount of greenhouse gases (around 39% globally). Therefore, it has an important impact on global warming and climate change. For centuries the irrational use of natural resources of non-renewable rawmaterials in the construction and building sector have damaged the eco-system and also hindered the sustainable development. This experimental research work contributes to the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals by adapting the use of natural fiber (which is recyclable, bio-degradable) to create new sustainable composite building materials. In this work recycled-jute fibers have been used to replace the plastic insulation material used to improve the thermal resistance of construction mortar. These jute fibers were collected during jute net fabrication process as production scrapes and testify to the possibility of using a natural material for an extended life cycle. The mechanical and thermal performance of jute fiber reinforced mortar have been tested in order to evaluate the effectiveness of this material for integrated retrofitting of existing masonry buildings. About 34.11% (with respect to the mortar mass) of the plastic insulation materials (already present in the original manufactured mortar product) have been replaced with 6.33% (with respect to the mortar mass) recycled jute-net fibers. Due to the presence of jute fibers (residual from net fabrication) in composite samples, approximately around 7.13%, improvement in the thermal insulation capacity has been obtained with respect to the non-reinforced mortar samples. Moreover, an increment in strain energy of the same composite mortar about 632.26% has been assessed.