Innovative Finishes Obtained by Integrating Agro-Industrial Waste into the Circular Economy and Their Impact on Indoor Air Quality

The integration of agro-industrial waste into the circular economy still needs to be improved. Using them in construction products can have some important advantages: low environmental impact, less energy demand, low cost, large-scale availability and good insulation properties. In this context, our research focused on integrating agro-industrial waste from sunflower oil production and sheep’s wool, as additives in two types of water-based finishing/protection products (like binder). Among the sources of indoor air pollution, releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), the indoor finishing products count, along with furniture, cleaning products, activities of the occupants, etc. Hence, to evaluate the impact on indoor air quality, we monitored VOCs emissions from four types of innovative multi-layer finishes with different recipes (composite type) and contents of embedded agro-industrial waste, in the closed operation mode of the emission test chamber. The average values of the TVOC concentrations for the monitored finishes ranged between 724 ppb (1661 µg/m3 in isobutylene units) and 1687 ppb (3871 µg/m3 in isobutylene units), as a result of the multiple interactions between the composition of the binder, the characteristics of the additives (quantity, nature, size) from the applied composite materials and the structure of the multilayer systems generated by the embedded agro-industrial wastes. A healthy indoor environment in which to spend our lives is of great importance for all of us. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the pollutant emissions of finishing products, when designing them, in such a way as to have the lowest impact on indoor air quality, and implicitly on our health.