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Novel cellulose based foam-formed products : applications and numerical studies Jahangiri, Pouyan

Abstract

A novel methodology using cellulose fibres in foam laid media is proposed in order to produce biodegradable, low-density porous materials called foam-paper. Foam-forming is a process in which paper-making fibres are located among the bubbles created by aqueous solution of surfactant. Finally, the suspension is de-watered and a 3D structure of fibre-network is made. Due to the 3D porous structure, high specific volume and capability of cellulose to participate in chemical reactions, these new products can be applied in heat insulation, sound absorption and aerosol filtration. Simplicity of production, biodegradability and being economically affordable are the most noticeable factors which prefer foam-papers to the other products with similar applications. In the current work, the first set of experiments is done on morphological characteristics of foam-papers. The effect of manufacturing condition (foam air-content) and fibre morphology such as fibre length and coarseness on the characteristics of the final product is studied. The influence of fibre specific surface (by adding valley beaten fibres), fibrillation (by using PFI refined fibres) and different pulp types is also investigated on tensile-index and specific volume (bulk) of the final products. The second set of experiments is run to specify the novel applications of foam-papers in sub-micron aerosol filtration, heat insulation and sound absorption. In order to perceive the physics of the flow though the grossly disordered geometry of foam-papers and also for providing insight into the structure of these novel products, numerical simulations based on Lattice-Boltzmann technique are carried out. For this purpose, 2D micro X-ray tomographic images are taken from the cross-section of some foam-paper samples to reconstruct their 3D structure. Finally, a model based on random cylinders and the frequency distribution of fibres in the thickness of the samples is proposed to reduce the huge amount of memory and large amount of CPU time.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International