Advanced recycling of post-consumer solid wood and MDF

ABSTRACT

Wood recycling is common practice in most countries. Currently, recovered wood is used for relatively low value uses including energy generation, particleboard manufacture, animal beddings and landscape uses. This paper gives an overview of two research projects that aim to generate high-value products from recovered wood and thereby encourage even higher rates of wood recycling. One project is concerned with the extraction of nano-crystalline cellulose from waste MDF and the other produces laminated beams from recovered wood.

KEYWORDS:

• Recovered wood
• recycling
• MDF
• nano-crystalline cellulose
• laminated beams

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Recovered wood is classified into three categories in France: Class A is ‘clean’ wood and principally packaging; Class C is preservative treated wood and Class B is everything else that is not in classes A or C. Specifically: nitrogen, heavy metal and boron levels must be <1000 ppm, chlorinated organics <10 ppm.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for the financial support from the ‘Région Pays de la Loire’ who funded the MATIERES project and the Agence de l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l’Energie (ADEME) [grant number WWN-2013-99] under the WoodWisdom-Net+ Research Programme who finance the CaReWood project.