Acoustical performance of samples prepared with cigarette butts

Cigarette butts which are majorly composed of cellulose acetate are an undesirable material waste mostly present in human debris and with little prospects for being recycled. In this paper, a new use of this material as an absorbing material is proposed and analysed. Samples prepared with used and unused cigarette butts were assessed according to ISO 10534-2: 1998 standard. Preliminary studies referring to the influence of the length of butts, their provenance (used or unused), the effects of compression, and comparison with other commercial materials are presented. The obtained results are very promising, showing high sound absorption performance. The performance of these materials compared with some commercial sound absorbers indicates that they could be used as possible alternatives. In any case, further studies are necessary and some of them are proposed herein. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.