As it was mentioned earlier a corn cob particleboard has been under research by this team in order to assess it as a possible alternative sustainable solution for different building applications. Previously, the microstructure and the elementary chemical composition of the corn cob were identified in [15] by performing a scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM/EDS) analysis. Its alveolar microstructure type and elementary chemical composition were found to be similar to the extruded polystyrene (XPS) or cork. These results have inspired us to think about a possible affordable and sustainable corn cob particleboard solution as an alternative to the previously reported ones [16], [17] and [18]. Therefore, a simple manufacturing process consisting in binding corn cob particles with wood glue according to the ratio of 1:4 (glue: corn cob particles), in terms of weight, is proposed here. This process includes four main stages which are, respectively, and in order: the mixing up of the components (i.e. corn cob particles and wood glue), moulding, curing (which is natural) and unmoulding. The resulting corn cob particleboard has been tested and, so far, some of the obtained properties such as density, fire resistance, durability, thermal conductivity, compression and bending strengths, and impact resistance, and its sustainability performance suggest adequacy of this product for the above identified building applications in an environmentally friendly way. For instance, in [19] a valuable thermal insulation performance of the corn cob particleboard under research was verified.
Corn cob particleboard samples sized 3 cm × 100 cm × 50 cm (thickness × width × height), Fig. 1, were processed specifically for the impact sound insulation tests and according to the manufacturing process described above. The curing occurred under controlled thermo and hygrometric conditions (i.e. laboratory conditions). The samples were pressed during this stage. The corn cob particleboard samples presented an average density of 334 kg/m3 (i.e. similar to cork for instance) and were completely dried during the tests.