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HUGE VOLUMES OF WASTE FIBREBOARD AVAILABLE NOW
Researcher Dr Mark Irle shares an update on research into waste fibreboard and its potential as a raw material stream. The research is part of the EcoReFibre project and funded by Horizon Europe
DF is a real success story as shown by its rapid rise in production across the globe. It became the second most produced wood panel type in the world from 2012 until the bubble burst in 2022 (see figure 1). Experts believe that the recent downward production trend will reverse soon, as it did after the financial crisis of 2008/9. MDF is, of course, present in post-
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consumer, waste-wood (PCWW) streams. The phenomenal increase in MDF production started to have a noticeable effect on the make-up of the PCWW stream about 15 years ago, ie particleboard manufacturers had to adapt their production parameters when using PCWW. Recycling a product involves the extraction of the different raw materials that make it up. Most of the non-wood materials, for example, knobs, hinges, nails, glues, laminates etc, in a product, like furniture, are closely associated with the wood, and so they are difficult to separate. Consequently, recycling wood products almost always has a chipping/grinding step to liberate the wood from non-wood components.
This also has the advantage of reducing the bulk volume of the PCWW, which reduces storage and transport costs. Because PCWW is reduced to small pieces, the primary commercial recycling method for it is particleboard manufacture. The breaking- up of wood into small pieces inevitably produces dust that is difficult to recycle and so it is often burnt for energy recovery. One advantage of chipped PCWW is that
Above: Dr Mark Irle WBPI | February/March 2025 |
www.wbpionline.com
it tends to have a low moisture content compared to virgin wood. The average moisture content observed from all the recovered wood piles sampled in France by the EcoReFibre project is currently 19%. This is low compared to the average moisture content of 23% observed by other researchers. The difference is probably explained by the fact that nearly half of the measurements were obtained from PCWW
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