384 THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY OF GRINDED ALMOND SHELL PARTICLE BOARDS Anilcan Sarikaya Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Sciences, Selcuk University, Konya, Turkey – Ahmet Ali Sertkaya Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Technology, Selcuk University, Konya, Turkey Eyub Canli Mechanical Engineering Department, Faculty of Technology, Selcuk University, Konya, Turkey – Cengiz Guler Department Of Wooden Mechanics And Technology, Faculty Of Forest, Duzce University, Duzce, Turkey ABSTRACT Almond is a common fruit/nut worldwide while its shell accounts for about half the weight of the fruit (shell weight is about equal to the edible part). Massive bulk shells are produced as a byproduct of almond production. The primary usage field of the shells is burning as a biomass solid fuel. However, there are applications where shells are used for filtering with or without carbonization, as additives to chemicals or cosmetics products. In the present report, almond shell is evaluated as a main constituent in organic particle board composites. A domestic type of almond shell bulk material was acquired and grinded to obtain granular form of it. Attained granular almond shells were mixed with dark oak chips with different volumetric ratios. The mixture was used in particle board production by means of heated compression molds and formaldehyde as binder. Several geometrical and operational parameters were also changed and tested, such as board thickness. Produced almond shell containing particle boards were tested and experimentally investigated for determining their thermal conductivities. The thermal conductivity tests were done in a branded test setup and facility, built in consistence with an international standard for determining thermal conductivity values. Tests were carried out for fixed temperature difference at different temperature levels, particle board densities, and almond shell volumetric rations in the particle boards. It is seen that density directly increases thermal conductivity while almond shell ratio has a changing effect on thermal conductivity based on particle board density. Also, thermal conductivity of the particle boards increases linearly with increasing temperature. Measured thermal conductivity values change between 0.07 and 0.19 W/m·K. Keywords: Almond shell, organic composite, particle board, thermal conductivity, insulation. Introduction Sustainable life of either a person or whole humankind necessitate constant planning, improvement, and development of all kinds of processes in our world. One specific process, which is in the focus of the current work, is processing almond fruit. This process yields significant amount of hard-shell byproduct as a kind of biomass. Commonly, almond shell biomass is used by burning it as a solid fuel. There are