Eco-friendly and high-performance thermal insulating fibre reinforced mortar to be applied on walls as a coating or panel

One of the priorities of the 2030 Agenda is to achieve a sustainable development path to balance environmental, social and economic

needs for present and future generations. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a

better and more sustainable future. The Green Deal is the roadmap towards the application of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs in all

European policies. In this context, the European construction industry faces great challenges that need real solutions. On the

environment side, it is clearly a sector with an unsustainable environmental profile that will need to overcome the traditional linear

path of production and consumption to adopt a Circular Economy model and Energy Efficient solutions. The number of studies on

new sustainable solutions to minimize the incorporation of processed raw materials or improve thermal insulation properties of

mortar have increased. Examples relate to the use of stone sludge waste from the cutting process as filler in rendering mortars or

fibres from textile waste to reduce its cracking or to the increased insulation of rendering mortars through the incorporation of cork

(recycled by-product of the cork industry) or silica-based aerogels (nano-structured material) as lightweight aggregates. However,

studies focused on combination stone sludge waste, textile waste, recycled cork together with aerogel in mortars have not been

found in the current literature.

The main objective of the Eco-Mortar 2.0 project is to develop an eco-friendly and high-performance thermal insulating fibre

reinforced rendering mortar for wall exterior retrofitting or wall panels coating of buildings by using diabase sludge from stone

cutting as filler, recycled cork and aerogel granules as lightweight aggregates and textile waste as fibres. This mortar will decrease the

use of non-renewable natural resources, improve thermal insulation and allow shrinkage cracking control.