Tannin-based particleboard adhesives

Work in South Africa and in South America has resulted in development of adhesives based largely or entirely on tannins. Tannins, which like lignins are renewable natural products, have the advantage of affording adhesives with low or no formaldehyde emissions, but tannin-based adhesives tend to be brittle. A useful tannin-based particleboard adhesive was reported using tannin extract... 

The development of wattle tannin-based plywood adhesives occurred concurrently with the particleboard adhesives and, although quite different adhesive properties are required to bond these two types of furnish, many of the basic premises on which their development were based are the same. A series of wattle tannin-based plywood adhesives that provide exterior bond qualities have been described in detail by Pizzi (182, 186). All recent formulations use low-molecular-weight polymers, as first suggested by MacLean and Gardner (131), rather than formaldehyde for crosslinking agents. 

In this chapter, the development of a thermosetting adhesive from soda bagasse lignin is described. The research has concentrated on the development of interior-grade adhesives for particleboard. The local market for exterior boards is smaller than that for the interior panels, and adhesives for exterior boards are already covered by an excellent range of tannin-based adhesives. 

Problems and facts that in the author s personal experience arise in the industrial application of tannin-based adhesives for timber sometimes indicate lack of correspondence with laboratory practice and results. These are often problems related to unusual characteristics of the adhesive itself, or of its application technique, which could not be noticed during research under laboratory conditions, but the existence of which could easily jeopardize successful implementation of laboratory technology into industrial practice. Correcting the credibility gap between research focus and industrial usage is seen as a critical step toward market expansion for these new products. Important considerations are consistency of tannins, extracts and adhesives properties due to the natural raw material variability formulation in cold-setting adhesives and application conditions (such as wood moisture and adhesive-content or pressing time) in particleboard adhesives. These problems have been overcome in use of wattle tannin-based adhesives as shown by a visual comparison of tannin-, phenolic-, and melamine-bonded particleboards exposed to the weather for 15 years and the growing use of tannin-based adhesives in other countries. 

Most of the recent efforts to develop uses for the condensed tannins have centered on their application in wood adhesives. Reviews by Pizzi (182, 186) and others (15, 78, 87, 93, 208) provide references to several hundred papers and patents on this subject. Despite world-wide research efforts on other sources of tannins, particularly since the 1972-1973 petroleum shortage, the mimosa or wattle tannins extracted from the bark of black wattle Acacia mearnsii) remain the major source of condensed tannins exploited commercially for adhesive manufacture. Of the approximately 100000 tons of wattle tannin produced annually, only about 10000 tons are used in wood adhesives, predominantly in South Africa but also in Australia and New Zealand (186). The extensive use of wattle tannins by the wood products industry of South Africa is impressive indeed, as these tannins have partly replaced phenol and resorcinol usage in adhesives for bonding of particleboard, plywood, and laminated timbers (182, 186, 213). Three factors have contributed to the success in use of wattle tannin-based adhesives, namely the comparatively high costs of phenol and resorcinol in the Southern Hemisphere, their resorcinolic functionality and low molecular weight and, perhaps most importantly, the commitment by the research and industrial communities of these countries to reduce the reliance of the forest products industry on petroleum-based adhesives. 

Table 10.3.1 Properties of exterior particleboards bonded with wattle tannin-based adhesives (136)...

Formulations for particleboard and plywood adhesives based on combinations of diisocyanates and compounds from renewable resources like tannins, starch, and proteins have been developed and tested at the Fraunhofer-Institute. All in all, the results of gluing tests indicated the potential for using diisocyanates combined with natural polymers for adhesive purposes where each natural product used alone will fail. More attempts will be necessary to find precise mixtures to produce successful adhesives for panel products. The development of adequate particleboard and plywood glue formulations based on diisocyanates and natural polymers has to be accompanied by more sophisticated technologies than those used in conventional production processes. The results presented here may give some hints on how these technologies can evolve. 

The main parameter for the application of tannins as adhesives for wood-based panels is the content of reactive polyphenols and the reactivity of these components towards formaldehyde. Tannins can be used as adhesives alone (with a formaldehyde component as crosslinker) or in combination with aminoplastic or phenolic resins. These resins can react chemically with the tannin component in a polycondensation reaction, form only two interpenetrating networks, or both. The simplest adhesive mix formulation consists of the tannin solution and powdered paraformaldehyde as crosslinker [283]. The addition of paraformaldehyde can cause in the short term a relatively high level of formaldehyde emission. Glue mixes using paraformaldehyde for the production of particleboards with low formaldehyde emission are described and used industrially [284]. In the literature a large number of papers describe the combinations of tannins with synthetic resins (Table 14). 

Compared to previous gluten based adhesives the present resins are applicable in liquid form, thus without any need for modifications of the application systems in particleboard factories. Relative to other protein adhesives such as soy-based adhesives based on reaction with formaldehyde some of the resins presented here have several advantages (i) they cannot and do not produce any aldehyde emission as neither formaldehyde nor any other volatile aldehyde was used in some of the formulations (ii) the percentage of natural materials was increased up to 70% for one type of formulation and up to 95% for others. Furthermore, in relation to resin formulations based on different cross-linking reactions other than those with formaldehyde the resins presented here have other advantages they are competitive with alternate natural resin systems such as those based exclusively on tannins and/or lignins. 

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