More than 124 million tons of oranges are consumed in the world annually. Transformation of orange fruit generates a huge quantity of waste, largely composed of peels. Some attempts to reuse by-products derived from citrus waste have been proposed for energy production, nutrient source or pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic industries. However, their use in the building sector had not been researched. In this study, orange peels, in five different ratios, from 100% of wet peels to 75% and from 0% of dry peels to 25%, were submitted to a thermo-compression procedure. They were evaluated according to their physical (bulk density, water absorption, thickness swelling, surface soundness and thermal conductivity) and mechanical properties (bending strength and modulus of elasticity). The results showed that orange peels can be used as thermal insulation material. The addition of dried peels makes the structure of the board heterogeneous and thus increases its porosity and causes the loss of strength. Hence, the board with the sole use of wet peel, whose thermal conductivity is 0.065 W/mK while flexural strength is 0.09 MPa, is recommended.

The recent natural and anthropic disasters have led some of today’s experimental researches to be oriented towards the study of residences for temporary living. During an emergency, the lack of primary resources and services often forces part of the affected population to live in inadequate health and environmental conditions. These problems are aggravated by the psychological damage to which the displaced people are subjected, as well as by the temporary nature of the residence. The temporary residence project should respect different requirements, e.g. construction speed, the ease of transport and the flexibility of the interior spaces. The aim of the present research is to improve the internal comfort of modular and prefabricated living areas designed for emergencies, through the application of a controlled mechanical ventilation system. The study aims to develop combinable and transportable modules that allow to obtain multiple spatial and planimetric combinations of accommodation thanks to an easy and quick junction system, the same for almost all panels. The easy assembly and disassembly as well as the ease of transport make these modules reusable and easy to install, fundamental characteristics as different emergency situations can occur in places very distant from each other. To achieve the required performance, a controlled mechanical ventilation system has been designed to make the modules adaptable to any environmental and climate context. A comparative analysis was carried out between a mechanical ventilation system and natural ventilation. For the mechanical ventilation an autonomous system for each module was chosen compared to a centralized system with ducts distributed in the house. The proposed solution allows to guarantee an adequate level of air health, without a significant increase of the associated costs.