Binders for Stone Wool

The ROCKWOOL Group is worlds largest manufacturers of stone wool based insulation. The University of Copenhagen section of LINX has assisted ROCKWOOL in studying the structure of bio-based binders using small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering.

Stone wool (mineral wool) products consist of an entangled network of mineral fibres. The air trapped in the network provides the product its good heat-insulating properties. The stone wool fibres are glued together with a binder to ensure mechanical stability of the products.

ROCKWOOL is developing bio-based alternatives to the current binder.

Read the interesting one pager about this project: Biobased binders for stone wool.

Techniques and Methods

The University of Copenhagen section of LINX has assisted ROCKWOOL in studying the structure of such bio-based binders using small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering (SAXS and SANS) techniques. The goal is to determine the structure of the raw materials for these new binders and gain information on how the raw materials behave in the solution that is spayed on the fibres to form the binder.

The binder consists of two components, where the second one acts as a crosslinker between the molecules of the first one. After mixing, SAXS and SANS allow to study in-situ the structure of the crosslinked binder network on a nano-scale during the setting process.

Project Information

Participants: ROCKWOOL, University of Copenhagen.
Start date, end date:
April 2018 – May 2019
Title:
Structure of biobased binders for stone wool (FP04.003, Colloid materials).