Waste Wood Recycling for Fiberboards

In September 2021 floods in Northeastern United States caused a damage of nearly $20 billion. Floods are associated with hygiene risks for human and animals, odor, contaminated water, damaged roads, landslides, mudflows, and other hazards. Waste wood recycling for fiberboards production helps reduce landfill waste by transforming leftover wood into high-quality, eco-friendly building materials.

Where does the wood debris come from?

Hundreds of thousands of tons of debris piles up in the flooded areas in post flood situations which includes wood, rubble, scrap metals, garbage, plastic, glass, fabrics, paper and cardboard, electronic waste (e-waste), mixed construction waste and the mud itself.

State and local response agencies are primarily concerned about life and assets of the people affected. But in addition, handling the debris in these areas has always been challenging. For instance, burying of certain plastics and garbage, and burning of wood is merely acceptable because of the potential side effects of smoke and fire from burning and potential water and soil contamination from burial.

There are typical methods of recycling and solid waste management and disposal in sanitary landfills but often cannot be applied to disaster debris because of the large volume of waste and reluctance to overburden existing disposal capacity.

Although, wood debris can be beneficial to streams and rivers systems because they help increase the roughness of the stream channel resulting in slow rushing stormwater and reduce the water’s power to damage stream beds and banks. In addition it is also important to fish habitat and provides ecological benefits.

Shifting this mixed type of debris into landfills in different areas in United States would be limited and expensive. Normally, when different types of debris are mixed up, it is very difficult to separate them into clean, recyclable or reusable sub-components but if classification of wood debris is made possible, a large amount of this can be used in furniture and other household products.

Particleboard

Fiberboards

For example, segregated wood debris can then be used for industrial products, or processed for fuel, or converted into compost bulking agent. Another proportion of this can be used as firewood also. Most of the remaining wood components separated from this debris can be used in pulpwood, fiberboard and particleboard industries.

Using Wood Waste in Manufacturing Fiberboards and Particle Boards 

The Low, Medium and High Density fiberboard (LDF, MDF and HDF) industries need a very small particle of wood as compared to conventional particleboard industries. These industries were developed in US in 1960s and produce a quite sophisticated engineered product.

Wood Pulp

The fiberboard manufacturers wash the wood chips, boil it for a specific time depending upon the type of wood, refine and ground it to high quality fiber particles and transport it to the next process through a conveyor at the same plant. Generally, these wood fibers are processed to maintain at about 0.1 to 0.5 millimeters in length.

Is This Safe to Manufacture Particleboards with Waste Wood Only

In contrast with the above practice, replacing virgin fiber with recycled fiber adversely affects the physical and mechanical properties of fiberboard. Practices have shown that a maximum of 10% recycled fibers could be used to replace virgin fibers without deteriorating the mechanical properties, bending strength, modulus of elasticity and screw withdrawal resistance.

In United States an average of 140 million tons of wood-based products are produced annually including furniture etc. which generate more than 80 million tons of wood residue including sawdust, and certain coarse residues and wastes from particleboard and fiberboard industries.

Additionally, there are construction or demolition wastes and almost all of these is then reused by the wood products industries for fuel, pulpwood board, fiberboard and feedstock for products such as particleboard.

Although these wood debris is often contaminated with dirt, paints, fasteners, adhesives but still the use of waste wood debris in these industries after some extra processing and cleaning would not only reduce their raw material cost but would also contribute towards the sustainability of the wood and environmental safety.