Sustainable technologies of leather wastes: An eco-friendly oily acrylic resin-reinforced collagen polypeptide-based foaming agent for the green processing of foam concrete

In this research, a new eco-friendly collagen polypeptide-based foaming agent (CPFC) was prepared via a hydrophobic grafting modification of the collagen polypeptide (CP) from oily acrylic resin, in which the CP was extracted from leather wastes. The molecular structure of CPFC was characterized by FTIR, TGA, XRD, and laser particle size tests. The results showed that the oily acrylic acid molecular chain segments effectively copolymerized with CP, improving the hydrophilic and lipophilic balance of CP molecules. Given the increase of acrylic resin content in CPFC, the surface tension of CPFC at the critical micelle concentration gradually decreased and tended toward the critical value (30 mN/m). The foamability and foaming multiple of 9-CPFC and 7-CPFC reached 535 mL and 31.89 times, respectively. Next, we prepared a CPFC-based foam concrete with a dry density of 500 Kg/m3 via compounding a mechanical CPFC foaming agent with concrete. The resulting CPFC-based foam concrete was then characterized using a universal testing machine, thermal conductivity meter, ultra-depth 3d microscope, and other analysis techniques. The results indicated that the 5-CPFC foam concrete possessed good foam stability and compatibility. Moreover, the pore size distribution of the foam concrete was uniform, showing a less stringy pore structure, and the water absorption rate and thermal conductivity levels were 27.8% and 0.61 W/m·K, respectively. The compressive strength of cement was approximately 1.37 MPa, which exceeds the national standard. Moreover, it was found that the CPFC possessed certain retarding properties that were similar to cement, suggesting that it is a highly suitable additive for foam concrete.