Utilization of water reed in production of various insulation panels

Abstract Some panels and particleboards were made from reed mats and blends of reed-wood chips to be used inside buildings for sound and heat insulations. It was seen that the outer layers of the reed body (spike) was almost water resistant and exceptionally resistant to the penetration of common adhesives. Therefore, the panels from stitched reed mats exhibited very poor mechanical strength. The sound transmissions of such panels (1–3 km/s) made with various combinations, however, were recorded to be excellent compared with that of particleboards made of wood (17 km/s). Blends of reed chips (2 cm) and wood chips, however, gave particleboards with better mechanical properties (5–17 MPa) than that of panels made from reed mats (2 MPa). An increasing amount of reed chips in tested particleboards was recorded to be improving both sound and heat insulations from 17 to 6 km/s and from 0.34 to 0.27 W/mK, respectively. The bending strength of samples, however, was reduced from 26 to 5 MPa. Thickness swelling was also noted to increase from 18% to 85% due to reed chips addition. It was concluded that the outer layers of water reeds should be modified via chemical and/or enzymatic methods to increase the interfacial bounds between adhesives.