الفهرس 
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Abstract
The building sector consumes up to 40% of the global energy consumption and contributes to about 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions. The energy-efficient design is a new approach in the construction sector, which includes not only the improvement of the building envelope thermal performance but also the reduction of the materials embodied energy. This approach could be achieved through developing bio-based thermal insulating materials that may include low cost locally available agricultural wastes. It helps also to improve the waste management as well as the positive effect in the environmental as a result of the waste management generation and the reduction of the non-renewable resources depletion. The increase of the global quantities of the agriculture waste by-products and the range of their applications encourages the researchers to realizing the opportunities in the transformation of the huge amount of unutilized agricultural wastes to profitable products. Agriculture by-products are increasingly used in the building industry. This dissertation is aimed to exploring the possibility of developing bio-based thermal insulating materials from different banana wastes available in Egypt. In order to develop the experimental bio-composites, banana leaves and peels were collected, washed, cut, dried and grinded. Then, leaves and peels powder were mixed with polystyrene polymer (PS) in different ratios (100:00, 90:10, 80:20, 70:30 and 60:40). The thermal conductivity (k), electrical conductivity, Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) of the leaves and peels raw materials as well as the eight different composites were evaluated. The thermal conductivities of pure leaves powder (BL) and pure peels powder (BP) were 0.11238 ± 0.0304 W/m.K and 0.132 ± 0.03492 W/m.K respectively. Adding polystyrene (PS) lowered the thermal conductivity of pure banana leaves from 0.11238 ± 0.0304 W/m.K to the range of 0.0183 - 0.03168 W/m.K BL-PS ,and the thermal conductivity of banana peels powder from 0.132 ± 0.03492 W/m.K to the range of 0.028 - 0.030 W/ m K . The obtained results of the current study supported the validity of the obtained bio-composites to be used in producing thermal insulators, since the recorded values of thermal conductivity were within the range recommended by literature and similar to those of other conventional insulating materials. These findings may support the validity of the tested banana composite to produce an inexpensive thermal insulation material that exploits a common waste product in banana fruit-producing countries.