Pollution and Pollution Control - Environmental Biotechnology: Theory and Application - page 87

Table4.5 Thermalconductivitytable

Material Conductivity (W/mK)

Cellulose 0.038-0.040

Fibreglass 0.033-0.040

Flax 0.038-0.040

Hemp 0.039-0.043

Mineral wool 0.033-0.047

Sheep's wool 0.037-0.040

in terms of thermal conductivity with the materials traditionally used in lofts or
cavity insulation such as fibreglass or mineral wool.
Conventional construction and demolition waste, consisting of concrete rub-
ble, timber fragments, brick shards and the like, poses a considerable disposal
problem for the industry, particularly with increasingly stringent environmental
regulation and rising storage and landfill costs. Though various recycling ini-
tiatives and professional codes of practice have helped ease the situation, there
is an obvious advantage in relatively inexpensive, lightweight and sustainable
materials which are truly biodegradable. Although uptake has principally been
limited to relatively small scale applications, interest has been gradually growing
and the momentum seems to be gathering particularly amongst house renovators
and the self-build community. The appeal of these and other biological materials
for uses in construction, the automotive and aerospace industries is clear, but
many of them are still in the quite early stages of their commercial development.
Whether they can successfully cross over into mainstream use remains to be seen,
but the results to date have certainly been encouraging.

Closing Remarks

As this chapter has shown, pollution and its mitigation have major ramifications
in many diverse fields both for industry and in the wider sphere of general human
activities. The potential contributions of clean technologies discussed in the final
section have enormous bearing on the reduction of contamination ab initio , and,
clearly, avoiding a problem in the first place is far better than cleaning it up after
it has occurred. However, in most cases, current applications of environmental
biotechnology to treat pollutants and wastes far outnumber the practical examples
of clean bio-manufacturing and so the rest of this topic will address this more
common use.

References

Aytar,P.,Sam,M.and¸ abuk, A. (2008) Microbial desulphurization of Turkish
lignites by white rot fungi. Energy and Fuels , 22 (2), 1196-1199.