Particle board waste processing

For this processing, the waste particle board was chipped but not ground to a fine meal. Milling of the particle board is not necessary because the cellulosic material is rapidly decomposed in the acid-catalyzed reaction, which releases the resin into the solvent, resulting in a more economical process. In the Carves patent 10 the wood and waste paper were first converted to a pulp and to a fluff, respectively. The moisture content of the as-received particle board was 3 wt%. Waste materials such as this with a low moisture content provide a good substrate for the alcohol reaction, since no drying is required. 

A major goal for promoting commercialization of the alcohol processing of waste particle board and plywood is the expansion of markets for alkyl levulinates. The major current market for alkyl levulinates is in fragrances, where the ethyl levulinate has a value of about 10/lb. Butyl levulinate is also used but the market is relatively small for both esters. 

A schematic for waste particle board processing is shown in Figure 5. This process avoids heating the resin in the presence of ethyl levulinate, which generates a highly insoluble resin product. Instead, the ethyl levulinate is extracted from the resin and subsequently vacuum-distilled to purify it. 

In summary, conversion of waste particle board and plywood directly to levulinate and formate esters utilizes waste that represents a disposal problem in a process that generates easily purified products with minimal wastewater. Commercialization of this process depends on market values for levulinate esters that are typical of chemical intermediates for resins and coatings. New challenges are presented in finding ester reactions and subsequent purification steps that lead to low-cost derivatives that will be useful for these industries. The economics may also be favorable for producing ester fuel additives with no purification required. 

Currently, existing pilot plants in Canada, Netherlands, UK utilize mainly well defined non contaminated biomass fractions such as wood particles, saw dust, and bark. The performed investigations in this work should broaden the knowledge of the pyrolytic behaviour of various industrial biomass waste. This wilt facilitate the introduction of flash pyrolysis processes into existing industrial processes. Therefore, a new way of biomass exploitation will be demonstrated. In cooperation with several companies different biomass waste such as cocoa shell, wood waste, fibre sludge and panel boards with a high content of phenol-foimaldehyde resin were decomposed by flash pyrolysis into smaller molecules to use them for the production of energy and/or chemicals. 

In this section, a new type of structural panel manufactured with a combination of these two wood resources is discussed. Waste wood chips were processed to particle and used as a core material. Small diameter logs were cut by a disk flaker to produce wafer or strand , which was used in Wafer-board or OSB production in North America. These strands were used as face layers of three-layer structural board in this experiment. Strength properties of the composite board made from Sugi-strand and recycled wood particle were evaluated. 

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