RESEARCH ARTICLE www.ms-journal.de Potential of Using Agricultural Waste Composites as Thermal Insulation Material Hasan Serin,* Gül¸ sen Güzel, Umut Kumlu, and Mustafa Atakan Akar A huge amount of waste is produced every day in the world and it is thrown away without giving them any new use. Agricultural wastes generated as a result of obtaining, processing, and consuming plant and animal products constitute a remarkable large part of this waste amount. Today, these wastes are used in the production of composites, and the composites produced from these wastes give positive results in durability, flexibility, and thermal insulation. Composite materials which are combination of different materials to create a new material with discrete properties than its ingredients have gained great importance with the increment of product variety thus the property requirement. In production process, it is now always possible to fulfill the requirements of the design with conventional engineering materials. Since composite materials have the ability of being tailorable they have been started to be used in many different application areas. Recently, the usage of such composite materials in the automotive field has been evaluated. In this review, the usage of composites produced from different agricultural wastes in thermal insulation has been examined. A detailed review of the past and recent research activities has been documented. The literature survey reveals that agricultural wastes can be a good candidate to be used as reinforcement or filler material in composites for thermal insulation purposes. 1. Introduction In today’s world, waste materials threaten the future of the world. In the world polluted with waste, the issue of recycling has started to be of great importance. Agricultural wastes, which constitute an important part of these wastes, are formed by the processing and consumption of plant and animal products. Fortunately, re- cycling of this agricultural waste can be achieved by using com- posite materials. Composite materials are usually produced with fiber reinforce- ment and the most common reinforcement material is glass H. Serin, U. Kumlu, M. A. Akar Department of Automotive Engineering Çukurova University Adana 01330, Turkey E-mail: hserin@cu.edu.tr G. Güzel Department of Machine and Metal Technologies Çukurova University Vocational School of Adana Adan 01160, Turkey The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/masy.202100409 DOI: 10.1002/masy.202100409 fiber. [1] However, the increasing amount of waste has led researchers to recycle and reuse waste. A significant part of the wastes used for this purpose consists of agricul- tural wastes. [2] Composites produced from agricultural wastes have important properties such as being light, noise absorption, and thermal insulator. In this study, the thermal conduc- tivity of composites produced from agricul- tural wastes has been reviewed and their us- ability as thermal insulation materials has been evaluated. Comparisons of composite materials produced from different agricul- tural wastes have been made in terms of thermal insulation. 2. Experimental Section The agro-residues had an interesting role because their use allowed the revalua- tion of agricultural wastes, whose dis- posal was another serious issue. [3] These wastes appeared as composite products that could be used in automotive and construction areas by combining with different matrix types and processing with different methods. While most of the agricul- tural wastes were separated from their products and combined with the direct matrix component, some of them undergo pro- cesses such as forging and chopping and combined with their matrix to form the composite material. [4] The general production process of composite materials produced from agricultural prod- ucts was shown in Figure 1. When the standards related to heat conduction were exam- ined, in ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and CEN (Comité Européen de 13 Normalization) standards; if the thermal conductivity coefficient () >0.065 W m -1 K -1 , then the building material, the thermal conductivity coefficient () <0.065 W m -1 K -1 was considered as a heat insulation material. [5,6] In this study, the studies on thermal insulation appli- cations of composite materials fabricated with agricultural wastes had been examined and their thermal conductivity values had been evaluated in the means of ISO and CEN standards. [7] 3. Result and Discussion Today, many researches have been made on the production and properties of these composite materials, which are evaluated for Macromol. Symp. 2022, 404, 2100409 © 2022 Wiley-VCH GmbH 2100409 (1 of 3)