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Development of Thermal Insulation Material Using Coconut Fiber to Reuse

Agricultural Industrial Waste

Article in International Journal on Advanced Science Engineering and Information Technology · June 2018
DOI: 10.18517/ijaseit.8.3.4610

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 Vol.8 (2018) No. 3
ISSN: 2088-5334

Development of Thermal Insulation Material Using Coconut Fiber to

Reuse Agricultural Industrial Waste
Ryushi Kimura #, Masato Ohsumi#, Lusi Susanti*1
#
Department of Social Design Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Kochi college, Kochi, 783-8508, Japan
E-mail: [email protected]
* Department of Industrial Engineering, Andalas University, Padang, 25163, Indonesia
+
Faculty of Information Technology, Andalas University, Padang, 25163, Indonesia
1
E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract— This paper aims to report a development of thermal insulation material using coconut fiber, which is one of agricultural
industrial waste in Indonesia and a verification of an effect of thermal insulation. Seven test pieces were developed under various
conditions (amount of fiber, two types of binder, amount of water, temperature setting and drying time) and thermal properties such
as thermal conductivities were measured using microcomputer “Arduino UNO” equipped with radiation thermos-camera. As a
result, the insulation material which mixed 30g of the coconut fiber, 30g of tapioca starch and 300ml of water, drying under the
setting temperature of 120 oC for 24 hours showed the lowest conductivity of 0.104 Wm-1K-1.

Keywords— thermal insulation material; coconut fiber; agricultural industrial waste; reuse and low energy building material

In this study, to propose reusing the industrial waste

I. INTRODUCTION effectively, we developed thermal insulation material made
In recent years, economic growth in South East Asian from coconut fiber. In order to verify an effect of the
countries is remarkable. According to World Economic insulation materials, we also developed simple and low-cost
Outlook Databases published by IMF, economic growth rate measuring system for recording temperature to calculate
based on GDP in Indonesia shows averagely 5.4 % since thermal conductivity using microcomputer board “Arduino
2000 [1]. Improvement for quality of life, especially indoor UNO” as a sensor node with non-contact radiation thermos
air quality causes increasing huge number of air-conditioner camera to measure multiple pointed temperature
demands and affects energy consumption in household simultaneously and small PC board “Raspberry Pi3” as a
sector [2-3]. Sukarno et al. reported that 92 % of Padang data logging platform. To develop the measuring system,
electricity supply went for residential sector and 17 % of the authors have ever experienced developing wireless
household electricity consumption was used for cooling load electricity measuring system [5-9].
[4]. It is important to effectively use of air-conditioner to
reduce energy consumption. However, because typical II. MATERIAL AND METHOD
residential building constructed by bricklaying is not The whole process for development of thermal insulation
attached thermal insulation material on walls, the is explained as follows: 1) making test pieces, 2) developing
construction brings an increase of cooling load. measuring system (hardware and software), 3) calculating
Therefore, to reduce energy consumption with the conductivity, 4) calibration for the developed system.
effective use of air-conditioner for residential buildings,
development of thermal insulation material is important. Our A. Preparation of test pieces
final goal in this study is to develop thermal insulation Fig.1 shows a process of making test pieces. There are
material using domestic materials and techniques in main four processes to make test pieces as followings; 1)
Indonesia to spread widely the insulation material to Shredding fiber in 3 mm to 5 mm by cutting machine after
buildings and reduce energy consumption. Additionally, one flaking coconut shell, straining off water, 2) Mixing fiber
of the social issues in Indonesia is to reuse agricultural with 2 types of binders such as natural binder, tapioca starch
industrial waste such as the huge amount of coconut fibers or chemical binder, polyvinyl alcohol and water, 3) Molding
discharged from coconut shells after extraction of palm fruit. test piece whose size of width 100 mm x depth 100 mm x

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height 30 mm using wooden form, 4) Drying by electric B. Outline of measuring system
oven and demolding test piece. 1) Hardware of measuring system:
TABLE I shows components of test pieces. To provide 7 Components of measuring system are shown in Fig.6. The
types of test pieces, 5 items such as amount of fiber (30 g or measuring system for thermal conductivity was based on the
35 g), water content (200ml or 300ml), two types of binder determination of steady-state thermal transmission properties
(tapioca starch or polyvinyl alcohol gel), drying temperature and Hotbox method [10]. The system is composed two parts,
(40, 80 or 120 oC), drying time (24h, 48h or 72h) were hot box part and automatic measuring part. Hot box (width
combined.

1.Shredding fiber 2. Mixing of components

“Flaking the fiber off” “Shredding by machine” Tapioca starch

Water

PVA

“Washing by water” “Straining off water”

3. Molding test piece 4. Drying and demolding test piece

“Putting in wooden form” “Putting wetted piece into oven”

“Demolding”

70㎜

30㎜ 100㎜

100㎜

Fig 1. Process of making test pieces

TABLE I
COMPONENTS OF TEST PIECES

Item
Binder
Case No. Coconut fiber Water Drying temperature Drying time Weight after drying
Tapioca starch Polyvinyl alcohol
[g] [ml] [g] [ml] [degree C] [hour] [g]
Case1 35 - 200 80 48 38.1
Case2 30 200 30 - 80 48 50.7
Case3 30 200 20 - 80 48 38.6
Case4 30 200 40 - 80 48 60.3
Case5 30 300 30 - 80 72 48.8
Case6 30 300 30 - 40 72 52.5
Case7 30 300 30 - 120 24 42.7
300 mm x depth 300 mm x thickness 30 mm) which made

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from extrusion-expanded styrene board
set silicon panel heater can generate
heat load constantly to make steady
state thermal condition. The upper part
of the board has a square (100 mm x
100 mm) hole for setting test pieces. To
generate heat quantity of 10 Wcm-2
from the heat panel, 10 V was output by
a volt regulator. Automatic measuring
part is composed Micro-Computer
board “Arduino UNO” (Fig.3) for
sensor controlling PC board “Raspberry
Pi3” (Fig.4) for data logging from
Micro-Computer board, two IC Fig.3 MC board Fig.4 PC board
precision centigrade temperature Arduino UNO Raspberry Pi3
sensors LM35 of Texas Instruments Inc.
(Fig.5), and non-contact radiation
thermos camera D6T-44 of OMRON
Co.Ltd (Fig.6) which can measure
thermal array of 16 points (4 x 4)
(Fig.7).

2) Software of measuring system:

Fig.8 shows data flow from sensor.
One of the features of Arduino is
equipped with communication ports to
read several types of data interactively Fig.5 Temperature sensor LM35 Fig.6 Thermos camera
and simultaneously. For instance, in the OMRON D6T-44
system, analog data from LM35 as
temperature data is an input to Arduino

Radiation thermos camera Temperature Sensor

for surface temperature of for room temperature
Test piece LM35
Micro-Computer board
OMRON D6T-44
for sensor controlling
Arduino PC board for
120 mm

Test piece data-logging

UNO

Raspberry Pi3
Silicon panel 30 mm
heater
100mm x 100mm
ThreeHigh 300 mm
300 mm

Temperature Sensor AC-DC

Thermal Insulation for temperature between Voltage regulator
Styrofoam heater and test piece
LM35
Fig .2 Components of thermal conductivity measurement system using Arduino and Raspberry Pi3

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through analog port directly. Analog data with I2C
communication protocol from D6T-44 as radiation T em perature
temperature data is input through I2C ports (SDA and SCL).
To change these analog data from each sensor to temperature distribution(4x4)
value, Arduino is written equations coding by Arduino IDE
using Arduino language similar to C++ language. Data
reading by Arduino is sent to Data platform in Raspberry Pi3
and converted to .TXT or .CSV format as output file using
JAVA based programming language Processing 3. Each
sampling code was referred author’s website [11].
C. Measurement condition
The measurement was conducted in a laboratory (floor
area 60 m2) at National Institute of Technology, Kochi
College in Kochi, Japan (Longitude 133.38 oE, Latitude 33.3
o
N), measuring period was from November 11, 2016 to
December 30, 2016. Room temperature was set 22 oC and
controlled by air conditioner during measuring period
(TABLEⅡ).
TABLE Ⅱ
MEASURING CONDITIONS R adiation M icro-C om puter
therm os cam era board
Period November 11, 2016 to December 30, 2016
Location 3rd floor, building of department of Fig.7 Temperature distribution using radiation thermos
environmental civil engineering and camera (OMRON D6T-44)
architecture, National Institute of
Technology, Kochi college, Kochi, Japan
Longitude 133.38 oE INPUT
Latitude 33.3 oN
Indoor set 22 oC (control by air-conditioning)
Temperature
temperature

D. Calculation of thermal conductivity Serial data

communication sensor
Equation 1 shows general equation for the heat load Q .
I2C protocol
The coefficient of heat-transfer was ignored because the air
around the hot box set test piece was circulated by DC fan
constantly to prevent retention of the air. Micro computer Arduino
board IDE
Thigh − Tlow Arduino UNO (similar to
Q=λ A
d
(1)
C++)

Equation1 transformed into Equation2. Then, item

16
I/O PC board
T
i =1
low ,i is an average 16 (4 x 4) points of surface
Raspberry Pi 3 Processing
temperature on test piece measured by radiation thermos
camera (D6T-44).

Qd
λ= OUTPUT
 16

 
 T − i =1
Tlow,i 
A Convert
CSV format
TXT format
 high
i  from Serial
  data
 
(2)
Fig.8 Data flow from sensor

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E. Calibration of measuring system
To calibrate of the measuring system, Japanese cypress
was measured because Japanese cypress is common building
material and measured with reliable conductivity value of
the cypress published by Timber Industry handbook [7]. The
size of the test piece for calibration is width 100 mm x depth
100 mm x height 30 mm (Fig.9) as same as other test pieces
for thermal insulation. The test piece was heated until
becoming heat balanced steady-state. The steady-state is Fig.9 Test piece of Japanese cypress
presumed a state which average difference of temperature
for 10 minutes is less than 0.1 oC based on the limit of
resolution of the sensor. [degree C]
50
The result is shown in Fig.10 and TABLE Ⅲ . The 45
conductivity was 0.140 Wm-1K-1 in almost 1 hour later when 40
the heat balance become steady-state. According to the 35
Timber Industry handbook[12], mean conductivity of 30
Japanese cypress is 0.120 Wm-1K-1. An error ratio of 25
conductivity between the measured value and referred value 20
was 14.2%. 15
10
TABLE Ⅲ 5
CALIBRATION RESULT (JAPANESE CYPRESS) [min]
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Thermal conductivity λ [Wm-1K-1] 0.140
Temp between test piece and panel heater
Time reached steady-state [min] 64
Average surface temp on test piece
Average surface temperature on test piece 25.03
Room Temp
Tlow[ oC ]
Fig.10 Change of temperature (Japanese cypress)
Temperature between panel heater and test 43.52
the form without unevenness can reduce heat loss by heat
piece Thigh [oC]
transfer through convective flow around the surface.
Room temperature [oC] 22.03 Additionally, the conductivity of test piece using PVA
binder in Case1 was valued 0.105 Wm-1K-1 as one of the best
results in other cases. The membrane was generated on the
III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION surface of the piece as similar to Case 6. Therefore, effective
use of PVA as chemical binder should be considered to
TABLE IV Shows results of the conductivity of all cases. improve conductivity.
The value of conductivities is distributed from 0.104 Wm-1K-
1 TABLE Ⅳ
to 0.160 Wm-1K-1. Figure.11 shows surface membrane RESULTS OF THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
made from tapioca starch on test pieces. An area of the
membrane is marked a black line on Figure.11. All test Case No. Thermal conductivity [Wm-1K-1]
pieces covered membrane hardened tapioca starch partly or
Case 1 0.105
the whole surface.
To reveal what factor affects change of conductivity, the Case 2 0.144
best-performed result of 0.104 Wm-1K-1 in Case 7 and the Case 3 0.130
worst-performed result of 0.160 Wm-1K-1 in Case 6 were Case 4 0.155
compared. The components of coconut fiber, water, and
Case 5 0.122
tapioca starch used the same amount, however, drying time
and temperature were different. Drying temperature and time Case 6 0.160
of Case 6 were 40 oC and 72 hours in the oven respectively, Case 7 0.104
on the other hand, the condition of Case 7 was 120 oC as 3
times higher than Case 6 and 24 hours or one-third of Case 6. IV. CONCLUSIONS
The both cases were covered the membrane whole surface In this study, we developed thermal insulation material
with visual observation. The surface of the test piece in using coconut fiber to reuse industrial waste and to reduce
Case 6 drawn by a broken line is uneven more than the energy consumption and simple thermal conductivity
surface of test piece in Case 7 because some parts of fiber measuring system using microcomputer board Arduino UNO
have gravitated in hardening fiber process. On the other hand, and reasonable PC board Raspberry Pi 3. As a result, the
the surface of the test piece in Case 7 was formed developed insulation material which mixed 30 g of the
comparatively flat and smooth because gravitating the fiber coconut fiber, 30 g of tapioca starch, 300 ml of water, under
could be prevented when the test piece become hardening the dry condition with 120 oC and 24 hours was best-
under high temperature and brief time. As a matter of course, performed 0.104 Wm-1K-1 of thermal conductivity.
Moreover, as drying condition for insulation material was

809
brief and high temperature, surface membrane from tapioca NOMENCLATURE
starch was formed effectively and functioned to increase Q heat load W
conductivity. The developed measuring system could d thickness of test piece m
measure thermal conductivity with an error less than 15 % T temperature ℃
using noncontact thermos camera.
As prospects for the future, to improve the insulating Greek letters
performance of coconut fiber insulation, we will examine 1) λ thermal conductivity Wm-1K-1
to combine antiseptic to prevent mold because tapioca starch
would cause generating mold in some moisty cases, 2) to Subscripts
develop lower-environmental load insulation material using i radiation thermos-camera measuring point
eco-friendly PVA binder.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
My deepest appreciation goes to staffs of recycle center at
Andalas University managed by Dr. Lusi Susanti to supply
experiment materials for this research. Research work
performed by Dr. Lusi Susanti was partly supported by
Research Grant of International Research Collaboration and
Publication No. 06/UN.16.17/PP.KLN/LPPM/2017. Dr.
Lusi Susanti also contributed to analyse the results.
case1 case2
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