Background There has been a growing awareness of acoustic pollution in the last decade, but there is still enormous room for improvement, especially with regards to noise produced by the industrial sector. The use of textile materials in infrastructure has a great potential to provide significant improvements in acoustic absorption. Objectives The NOISEFREETEX project aimed to validate demonstrative solutions that reduced noise pollution in industrial estates through the use of textile finishing technologies. The plan involved defining textile materials with interesting sound absorption properties and use them as construction elements for industrial facilities. The project also set out to test (in a real industrial installation) different kinds of finishing processes, and improved material properties. Overall results should have improved the noise absorption coefficient for finishing processes by more than 20%. Specific objectives covered: Defining specific textile materials that have valuable properties, such as sound absorption, and moreover that can be improved and optimised. This included reusing textile waste from industrial processes (resins, spinning powder, cut-offs, selvages and defective items); Improving sound impacts from different kinds of materials during finishing processes, (mainly electro-spinning, plasma surface treatments and coatings); Validating demonstrative solutions or prototype materials to reduce noise pollution (noise barriers, encapsulated systems); Studying the compatibility of such solutions with the environmental noise directive (2002/49/EC). Expected outcomes focused on confirming up to ten different textile materials with improved acoustic properties and compatibility with fire safety regulations. Five materials with the best acoustic purposes would then be further validated with software simulations and laboratory tests. Results NOISEFREETEX project outcomes developed a new product with better acoustic properties than the comparable solutions, and which re-uses waste materials to create resource savings. A recycled polyester wool was selected and tested using several finishing technologies. The application of anionic antistatic pre-treatment followed by electrospining (NY6+PEO-400) and the further development a sandwich structure was identified as the most promising solution for the production of the sound absorption devices. As regards the acoustic barriers, several models were created by varying the percentage and diameter of holes in the material. NOISEFREETEX sound absorption system (NSAS) was shown to be more effective than other materials tested because it provides a similar acoustic behaviour than comparable material but with 85% reduction in the total weight. Also, it offers the possibility of adjusting the composite structure to improve its absorption spectrum. NSAS fulfils all the requirements of the EU standards for barrier walls. The environmental impact and economic feasibility of the NOISEFREETEX sound absorption system was evaluated through a Life Cycle Analysis. From an environmental point of view, NSAS has a comparable impact in terms of toxicity (both human and environmental toxicity), whilst it is less polluting in terms of Green House Gases emissions (both in its production and transportation) and allows significant savings in water. Production costs are on average lower and it is expected that project results and knowledge gained will be valid for other solutions. The new product is made from two different materials. An existing (and performance proven) recyclable nonwoven ‘PET’ is combined with a recyclable nano-fibre web PET. This type of textile finishing has a positive economic feasibility and already exists on the market. Hence it is replicable but industrial application of this product by EU textile companies is expected to be limited by the expense of industrial electro-spinning equipment. Other project results developed software to determine the acoustic behaviour of different solutions in different conditions. This predicts the behaviour of combined textile base materials, finishing technologies and acoustic barriers. It can identify the best model of acoustic barrier (structure and composition-type of wool, veil, type of panel, etc.) according to a client´s needs. Functions include calculating expected results according to current European standards´ tests and categories for acoustic barriers. This is the first free software that allows these kinds of calculations. It is also the first software that incorporates natural and recycled materials. The easy-to-use software is available from the project´s website in three languages (EN, ES, IT; http://noisefreetex.aitex.net/index.php/publicdocuments). Further project results developed scaled-size transmission and reverberant chambers, which can reduce human and material inputs during the design and development of acoustic barriers. Italy’s Ministry of Transport and Public Work has confirmed its willingness to include the project’s validated materials in the Building Catalogue. Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report and After-LIFE Communication Plan (see "Read more" section).