Abstract:
Exterior water-based paints containing aluminium powder and nanocellulose (bacterial nanocellulose, SCOBY bacterial cellulose; plant nanocellulose) were prepared, aiming to improve reflection and thermal insulation property of the exterior paint. The formulated paints were coated onto fiber-cement plain sheet and allowed to be dry for 168 h. The results showed that the paint mixed with aluminium powder and nanocellulose exhibited poorer thermal reflection and thermal conductivity performance due to unsuitable experimental design. Therefore, nanocellulose containing paints were further studied in this study. Two types of nanocellulose (from bacterial cellulose and plant cellulose) were employed. Paint formulations were prepared as follows; 0.19 wt%, 0.38 wt%, 0.58 wt% and 0.82 wt% for SCOBY bacterial nanocellulose and 0.50 wt%, 1.01 wt%, 1.51 wt% and 2.16 wt% for plant nanocellulose, respectively. The percent of temperature difference (%Tdif) between direct heating surface and the opposite side was calculated. The control paint has 3.67 %Tdif.. It was observed that exterior paints containing SCOBY bacterial nanocellulose have %Tdif as follows: 8.16%, 6.21%, 7.70% and 12.41%. While %Tdif of plant nanocellulose are 3.26%, 7.33%, 9.14% and 10.18% when compared to 8.24% of commercial benchmark. The results showed that the addition of nanocellulose could improve thermal insulation property over the control paint due to low thermal conductivity of nanocellulose.