Particleboards from agricultural lignocellulosics and biodegradable polymers prepared with raw materials from natural resources
Electra Papadopoulou1 and Konstantinos Chrissafis2
1CHIMAR HELLAS SA, Kalamaria, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
Introduction
Since the early years of humanity, wood has been burned for heating, while it is also widely used in constructions, furniture production, and paper manufacturing. In more recent years, it has also become the most efficient feedstock of biorefineries for the production of bioenergy and biochemicals. This new application has sharply increased its consumption and together with its always increasing use in the traditional applications, due to the continued growth of the world population, it is envisaged that there will be a shortage of its availability in a few decades.
To address it early enough, scientists are looking for alternative materials, both for the new and traditional uses of wood. Since population growth will create not only increased demand for materials and products, but also a large amount of waste, efforts are given not only for new but also for biodegradable options.
A kind of materials with many applications in the construction sector and furniture is the composites. One class of these materials is wood-based panels (like particleboards, MDF, OSB, plywood, etc.) made of petrochemical polymers and wood pieces. The replacement of wood by agricultural waste materials has been found to be an attractive and feasible solution, and when the polymers are derived from renewable resources and are biodegradable, the composites are completely environmentally friendly products.
A review of studies conducted over the past 10 years on the development of particleboards with renewable and biodegradable raw materials is presented in this document.
