Creating an industrial production process for wood panels from agricultural crop waste
This research encompasses the fields of materials science, forestry and agricultural studies, and process chemistry to identify viable wood alternatives in agricultural crop waste, and then develop an optimized process for their use in large scale wood panel production.
Our group works with industry partners to find an economically viable and environmentally sustainable replacement for wood in the production of wood panels. Exploration of alternative crop waste materials will allow us to reduce the wood panel industry’s reliance on increasingly expensive softwood chips.
We make lab scale wood panels from selected crop waste materials and then test them according to AS/NZS standards for mechanical and physical properties. Our group works on optimising this process by designing tests for key variables at each stage of wood panel production, with the plan of conducting tests on an industrial scale press in 2020.
Marcus C. Wong, Simone I.S. Hendrikse, Peter C.Sherrell, Amanda V. Ellis. Grapevine waste in sustainable hybrid particleboard production, Waste Management, 2020, Volume 118, pp 501–509, 10.1016/j.wasman.2020.09.007
Ohio Soybean Council
Australian Research Council Training Centre for the Chemical Industries