This article presents the potential application of paper/wood industry waste by-products, i.e. lignosulphonate (LS) in conjunction with lime (LM) i.e. LS-based cementing admixture (LSCA) to mitigate ...desiccation induced cracking and mechanical vulnerabilities of expansive soil subgrade. The results showed that the LSCA and lime (LM) significantly ameliorated the soil consistency, subgrade strength characteristics (i.e. California bearing ratio and resilient modulus), and completely mitigated the swelling potential with enhanced resistance against S
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. Moreover, the LSCA and LM notably reduced the 3D-volumetric shrinkage and crack intensity factor (CIF) by 90.1 and 87.4%, respectively. The mineralogical and microstructural analyses manifested that the LSCA induced new cementitious compounds (i.e. hydrates of calcium silicate and calcium aluminate), and substantially enhanced the interlocking among the soil particles compared to the untreated and LS-treated soils. Besides, pavement thickness analyses showed that the LSCA treated subgrade, omits the provision of sand cushion and sub-base course promoting road material conservation.
This paper reviews the development of the Chinese wood products development in the last 10 years, besides offering an overview about its forestry and specific export and import markets for the ...commodities, encompassing sawn wood and wood-based components. In the last decades, China's forestry and wood industry encountered an accelerated development. This progress resulted in China's emergence as the largest player not only in the global wooden raw materials, but also in the wood products market, and has become the largest exporter of value-added wood products. Since 2000, China has introduced modern industrial equipment for the forest products manufacturing and consolidated its trade marketing. It is likewise the largest importer of unprocessed or semi-processed soft-, hard- and tropical wood species. Moreover, China itself developed over the past 10 years into the largest importer of logs worldwide, a position traditionally held by the USA. Its imports are decreasing nowadays due to increasing restrictions imposed on wood exports by other countries. The national consumption of wood-based panel products in China increased steadily due to the higher purchasing power that determined a quick development of the furniture, flooring and construction industry. China is the largest producer of medium density fiberboard/high density fiberboard, plywood and particleboard, as well as container floors and wooden pallets; furthermore, one of the world's largest user and especially important producer of pellets. China has been the leading exporter of wooden furniture since 2004, overtaking the traditional European exporters.
Energy access in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remains a challenging issue at the midway point to the United Nations’ development goals. From the perspective of energy efficiency and diversification of ...power-generation sources, this paper investigates the capacity of the wood-processing industry to contribute to the decentralised power generation by performing a techno-economic analysis of the use of wood residues for cogeneration. Using a survey performed in Cameroon as a case study, a biomass-fuelled cogeneration scheme and a model analysing its viability are proposed for the specific context of SSA. A sensitivity analysis indicates for a given process efficiency of the industry, the attractiveness of cogeneration as the processing capacity and feed-in tariffs of electricity increase. More specifically, the threshold of feed-in tariffs ensuring the economic viability of CHP in the sub-region is estimated at $0.15 per kWh for mills where the output capacities of sawn timber products are of 5000 cubic metre per annum and more. The power-generation potential from the primary processing of timbers in the sub-region is about 388 kWh per cubic metre of sawn wood, while the energy intensity of the sawing process is estimated at 132 kWh per cubic metre. Therefore, the industry can generate up to 2472 GWh of electricity in the three sub-regions of East, West and Central Africa if a total of US$ 2.5 billion is invested, allowing a substantial increase of 1% of the current electricity-generation capacity for the geographic location which has the most important forestry resources on the continent.
•Wood-processing residues can contribute significantly to the distributed power generation in African forestry regions.•Energy patterns and the biomass feedstocks from wood-processing industries in Sub-Saharan Africa is comprehensively analysed.•The condensing-extraction steam turbine appears to be the most suitable technology for wood-fired CHP in Sub-Saharan Africa.•A model analysing the viability of industrial wood-fired CHP in the particular context of Sub-Saharan Africa is provided.•Key barriers to the development of waste-wood-fuelled CHP in Sub-Saharan Africa are identified.
Formaldehyde mainly emitted from wood adhesives, finishing materials, paint for furniture represents, together with wood dust, a potential carcinogenic risk for wood workers. Aims of this ...multidisciplinary study are to investigate the possibility of replacing urea-formaldehyde (UF) adhesives in the wood industry with organic and/or inorganic-based glues to obtain a final less toxic product and to evaluate the potential toxicity of wood glued with such new adhesives. For this purpose we selected poplar wood to test an organic new adhesive HBP (Hemp Based Protein), a mixture of hemp flour and cross-linker PAE (polyaminoamide epichlorohydrin), and spruce wood to test an inorganic adhesive geopolymer K-PSS (potassium-polysiloxosialate) plus polyvinyl acetate. For the poplar wood, we also used a commercial panel glued with UF for comparison. We reproduced occupational inhalation exposure during sawing activities of mentioned woods, collected and characterized the wood dusts emitted during sawing and evaluated in vitro their potential cyto-genotoxic and inflammatory effects. We used human lung cells (A549) exposed for 24 h to 20 and 100 μg/mL of collected PM2.5 wood dust. We found that both the new adhesives wood dusts induced a slightly higher apoptotic effect than untreated natural wood dusts particularly in spruce wood. Only geopolymer K-PSS wood dust induced membrane damage at the highest concentration and direct and oxidative DNA damage that could be explained by the different chemical composition and the lower particle sizes in respect to organic HBP adhesive wood dust. We found slight induction of IL-6 release, not influenced by K-PSS treatment, at the highest concentration in spruce wood. For poplar wood, IL-6 and IL-8 induction was found particularly for untreated and UF-treated wood at the highest concentration, where hemp adhesive treatment induced lower inflammation while at lower concentration similar slight cytokine induction was found for all tested wood dusts. This preliminary study shows that natural adhesives used to replace UF adhesives represent an interesting alternative, particularly the organic hemp-based adhesive showing very low toxicity.
Wood contains primary extractives, which are present in all woods, and secondary extractives, which are confined in certain wood species. Extractives in wood play a major role in wood-bonding ...processes, as they can contribute to or determine the bonding relevant properties of wood such as acidity and wettability. Therefore, extractives play an immanent role in bonding of wood chips and wood fibres with common synthetic adhesives such as urea-formaldehyde-resins (UF-resins) and phenol-formaldehyde-resins (PF-resins). Extractives of high acidity accelerate the curing of acid curing UF-resins and decelerate bonding with alkaline hardening PF-resins. Water-soluble extractives like free sugars are detrimental for bonding of wood with cement. Polyphenolic extractives (tannins) can be used as a binder in the wood-based industry. Additionally, extractives in wood can react with formaldehyde and reduce the formaldehyde emission of wood-based panels. Moreover, some wood extractives are volatile organic compounds (VOC) and insofar also relevant to the emission of VOC from wood and wood-based panels.
The future of the Slovenian wood industry lies in flexible production, which is able to quickly develop and produce high-quality and competitive products. We used the quality function deployment ...method to develop a new product. The research was completed by building a house of quality matrix. This was carried out by determining the technical requirements of the product that optimally fit the target group of costumers, while taking into account the technological capabilities and economic requirements of the company. The survey showed that customers want to be able to make choices, so they can achieve maximum satisfaction in adapting the product to their needs and desires. This is especially important because certain features of the product have a greater impact on their purchase decisions. In the case of dining tables, these are primarily the size, material and surface treatment. The marketing strategy for new product should also work to highlight some strengths of the product which are not noticeable to costumers at first glance.
Social acceptability of forestry practices plays a key role in defining sustainable forestry policies and strategies. In this study an online survey was distributed among members of environmental, ...non-governmental, professional, and academic organizations to assess the acceptability of forestry practices in Puerto Rico among members of civic society interested in environmental management issues. Participants were asked about their perception of forest uses, their preference of tree harvesting technologies, methods that may apply in small scale wood production settings, and trust in organizations providing forest information. We also inquired about attitudes towards economic activity in forests and the impact of such activity on recreation and biodiversity. The results show that even though participants do not place a high priority on economic development through forestry activities, acceptance of forest management for wood harvesting will be possible by considering adherence to particular forestry technologies and methods to safeguard current recreation activities and biodiversity conservation. Social acceptability information would be worthwhile when seeking consensus among a broader group of local stakeholders. As a next step we suggest the creation of a council constituted by diverse forestry sector stakeholders that would engage in a strategic planning exercise to delineate a clear road map that can guide short and long-term sustainable forest management, including wood industry development.
En las economías basadas en la exportación de materias primas, el desarrollo de capacidades de innovación es un fenómeno reciente que presiona a las empresas a introducir cambios en sus procesos ...industriales. Con el objetivo de caracterizar las dinámicas particulares del proceso de innovación en la industria primaria de la madera, se aplicó una encuesta presencial a treinta empresas del sector. Los resultados del estudio revelaron que los esfuerzos de innovación empresarial son individuales y no asociativos, se basan en adquisición y no en la investigación y desarrollo de soluciones tecnológicas propias, y se evidencia la ausencia de una infraestructura de conocimiento que brinde soporte para iniciativas de innovación en el sector. Como efectos de las actividades de innovación las empresas que se estudiaron logran optimización de procesos, mejoras en calidad, aprendizajes organizacionales y crecimiento en el mercado.
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