Developing a compression moulded thermal insulation panel using postindustrial textile waste

•Multi-material systems pose complexities in conventional recycling processes.•Nylon/Spandex fabric and Polyurethane shreds were used to produce a novel material.•Compression moulding under heat was used to produce the novel material.•The novel material has good thermal insulating properties. Postindustrial textile has incrementally become a major issue of global concern over the last decade, especially, synthetic textiles, given their non-biodegradability, toxicity and expected growth with ever-increasing production quantities. Absence of proper waste management facilities and technologies poses both environmental and social challenges in textile waste management. Multi-material systems further increase the complexities in textile recycling. Mixing of Spandex with Nylon to improve stretchability of fabrics is extremely common nowadays although it renders Nylon almost impossible to be recycled. Here in, a complete process to develop a novel thermal insulation material is presented, using synthetic material cutting waste (Nylon/Spandex and Polyurethane). Thermal insulation panels were developed using compression moulding. A sample matrix of panels with different proportions of Nylon/Spandex and Polyurethane was subjected to testing for thermal conductivity. The combination giving the best thermal insulation was experimentally found to be 60% Nylon/Spandex fabric shreds mixed with 40% Polyurethane shreds. The thermal insulative behaviour of the novel material was modeled using a power series, using the material thickness as the parameter.