Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Green Insulation

There's a new green insulation product out there called Greensulate. It is designed to replace both styrofoam and fiberglass insulation and is cheap to make, easy to make locally just about wherever you are, light, strong, has a good R value and is very fire resistant. When you are done with it, it is biodegradable. It can be insulation in your walls, firewalls in your home, or packing material in your boxes. Here's the cool part: you don't make it, you grow it. They fill molds with a mixture of water, minerals, starch, and hydrogen peroxide and then introduce mushroom mycelium. When the mycelium have grown through the substrate, they are removed from the mold and dehydrated, killing the mycelium.

As an engineer, I'd love to see specifications on strength, durability, longevity, and R-value of this stuff. As a bioneer, I'd love to know what kind of mushrooms they are using. I'd also love to know what they are using as a food source for the mycelium to grow on. There are so many agricultural waste products that would be great for this.

I'm totally geeking out over here.

1 comment:

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