The effect of the heat treatment level HT on the mechanical behavior of cork

Sustainability in wet biomaterials embedded in the walls of a building for thermal or sound insulation purpose requires heat treatment, which is known as environment-friendly process, to change some chemical elements responsible for the degradation of the biomaterial. The objective of this work is to study the effect of the temperature of heat treatment cycle in HT on the apparent diffusion coefficient in cork, which was selected based on their ecological characteristics. This coefficient was evaluated indirectly from the measure of the crock conductivity in the radial direction combined with modeling at the range of 10-13 m/s. Likewise, the TGA analysis confirmed that the heat treatment at high temperature, which leads to the degradation of hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin, is more efficient due to the drop of the value of the diffusion coefficient.