Recycling of Urea-Formaldehyde Resin-Bonded Particleboard and MDF

The large global production quantity of particleboard and medium density fiberboard (MDF) creates equal quantity of particleboard and MDF waste after completing their service life. Given increasing demand for green products and the new governments environmental policies, it is urgent to develop technologies to recycle these used composite panels into valuable raw materials for manufacturing composites again.
This research will focus on the development of recycling solutions for waste Urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin-bonded particleboard and MDF.
Thermohydrolytic (treated with steam and heat) treatment with chemical catalyst will be applied to recycle the waste particleboard and MDF. And the recovered particles or fibers will be used as raw materials with different substitution of fresh materials to manufacture particleboard or MDF panels. The quality of the resulting particleboards or MDF will be evaluated by determining their performance and formaldehyde emissions.
Moreover, this research will lead to develop a complete environmentally friendly recycling process. Waste mixture aqueous produced during the wood panels recycling, which is rich in chemicals, will also be separated and purified to recover the chemicals.
This project can accelerate innovation process for recycling waste UF-bonded wood composite panels and facilitate the collaboration between FPInnovations and the industry, governments and Laval University.

Faculty Supervisor:

Alain Cloutier

Student:

Qilan Fu

Partner:

FPInnovations

Discipline:

Visual arts

Sector:

Manufacturing

University:

Program: