Thermal properties of a new ecological building material/Granular cork embedded in white cement

Cork, natural and renewable product, has thermal and acoustic properties very interesting because of its microstructure and porosity representing a significant portion of its apparent volume; it's coming from Moroccan Maamora's forest. This work is a contribution to understand the thermal behaviour of the composite material based on granular cork embedded in white cement. An experimental investigation of its thermal properties was mainly performed using the asymmetrical device of transient Hot Plate method. The effect of granular cork size on the thermal properties of the mixture was studied. The experimental study of this sustainable material aims to characterize its thermal properties and then compare them with those of white cement without cork for motivate the proposal that this composite material will be used as walls insulator. A comparison of the energy performances of the composite material and white cement was made; it allows deducing a very interesting energy gain. The findings of the experiments indicate that the composite is better than white cement in term of thermal insulation, energy storage capacity and lightness. So, it can be used to realize the internal walls insulation. Its utilization should contribute to the improvement of the energy efficiency in building especially that this is a mixture based on a sustainable and renewable material.