54 | Feature: PAL
◄ “Many new materials and requests are coming all the time to the PAL lab. “We’re also working on systems for municipalities (concerning consumer waste) and in biogas. People were burning all the material, but as legislation changes, the trend is to recycle more wood.” PAL had already developed a sorting system to separate waste MDF from other waste wood, as this is a crucial requirement for particleboard manufacturers who do not want waste MDF fractions contaminating their waste wood material infeed. “So, the question is now what to do with this waste MDF? It is a big issue.” Mr Ballarin pointed out that major corporates such as IKEA are placing a high emphasis on the recyclability of the materials they use, creating demand for solutions. But he said this raises questions on the quantity of the available MDF waste to be used for recycling and the economics of doing so.
“Straw is available in very big quantities but may not be concentrated in the places where it can be used [by the panelboard sector]. The logistics are very important. It’s for this reason we think that a realistic starting point is to use between 10% and 20% recycled fibre in a new MDF board.” “We are focused not only on MDF but also woodfibre insulation board. Systems which are also able to be used in the woodfibre insulation board sector give much more possibility for the use of the recycled fibre. “Maybe the future will not be the building of very big fibre recycling plants but with smaller modular plants, segregating the fibre with different uses.” When PAL visited MDF Recovery’s operational prototype fibre recycling plant, it was very impressed with the system. PAL conducted a number of different tests using its cleaning technology in tandem with MDFR’s process and saw “very good results”. PAL places a big emphasis on sorting the waste MDF fractions into the correct size. To be able to clean the material efficiently, PAL says it is important not to have too small a dimension of waste fraction. “We made a comparison with other systems available and were convinced this system worked in a very easy way, so we think with this system it is really possible to segregate the fibres with very little loss of material,” explained Mr Ballarin.
“The MDFR system is a very smooth process, with the reaction concentrating on the hydrology of the glue. This convinced us to work on it and we found MDFR to be a serious company.”
Top: Selected MDF chips
Centre: Disaggregated MDF fibre Above: Cleaned MDF fibre
TTJ | September/October 2024 |
www.ttjonline.com
Hence the partnership was born. For MDFR, having PAL on board with its recycling and cleaning expertise effectively means a complete system is able to be supplied for the sorting, cleaning and recycling of MDF waste.
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