Typha as a circular building material.

Innovation towards biobased energy concepts.

In 2050, the European Union aims to have created a carbon free and circular society. At the same time nature and biodiversity needs to be restored. For the current energy transition in the built environment this means not only developing solutions that can reduce energy consumption considerably, preferably changing the built environment, who currently is responsible for 40% of total energy consumption worldwide, into an energy producing part of society. This also means that the embodied energy and the environmental impact of solutions used for this major renovation challenge needs to be lowered substantially, or better still, to be transformed into a positive impact.

The aim of this paper is to describe the outcomes of a development towards a circular and biobased sandwich panel from Typha. Research is used to make an inventory of the possibilities for realizing a circular sandwich roof element with the use of Cattail (Typha) as a construction and insulation material. It is important to determine what the properties are of the new Cattail sheet material and what preconditions are needed to use Cattail in construction. Currently the industry mainly uses harmful binders, such as aldehydes and isocyanates, these chemicals are heavily polluted These binders cannot be regarded as a circular solution and therefore alternatives had to be found. How can a circular sandwich roof element be made from Cattail and which circular adhesives are important? Finally, it is important to determine what the use of Cattails contributes to the reduction of the amount of carbon and nitrogen. It is possible that a renovation concept can be realized with a negative carbon footprint.