From wood waste to value-added.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: NEWS

Researchers at Lakehead University are fine-tuning a value-adding process to agriculture and forest waste that's almost akin to converting water into wine.

Through a technology developed at the Thunder Bay campus, faculty in their chemical engineering and forestry programs say natural resins extracted from biomass can be used as bonding agents for engineered wood products such as plywood, medium density fibreboard and laminates.

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In August, their research work received $49,500 from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. (NOHFC). The money is earmarked to further develop the technology and eventually proceed with large scale testing.

Chemical engineering professor Dr. Charles Xu says the project looks at producing phenol-formaldehyde resin from forestry biomass and agricultural residue such as sawdust, wood chips, bark, pulp and paper residue, wheat straw and corn stalks.

Also in the mix is testing a waste produced from corn ethanol production called DDG (distillers dried grains).

"Those will be some of the raw material we are going to use to do the resin production," says Xu.

"We can prove the technology we are going to develop is feasible."

Eventually, it's hoped these could replace more expensive resins produced from the petrochemical process.

The extraction process involves liquifying the forestry and agriculture waste. To make resins from the feedstock, they add formaldehyde.

"The liquid contains phenolic compound," says Xu, "plus other components from the biomass. We want to analyse the compounds."

Over the next three years, they'll use government funding to more fully develop the technology before moving on to the pilot scale stage.

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