Organic waste as absorbent materials

The food industry generates a large amount of easily controlled organic waste, which can be reused for various purposes. The responsible management of this type of organic waste is giving rise to initiatives for its reuse. One of the uses of food waste could be the construction of insulating or absorbing materials. In the present paper, the values of the acoustic absorption coefficients of three materials made of organic residues of cocoa, corn, and sugar cane are reported. These materials were first oven-dried and then triturated to get a disaggregated material. These residues were used as a base material for the construction of samples to conduct the experiment, with the aim that the materials generated can be used in absorbing acoustic panels. The impedance tube was used to measures the sound absorption coefficients. The results indicate that the materials have good absorption at medium and high frequencies.