Mill Trials of a Novel Formaldehyde-Free Soy-Based Wood Adhesive for Making Plywood

Interior wood composite panels are widely used for furniture, bookshelves, kitchen cabinets, and flooring, and are predominately made with carcinogenic urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin. A new formaldehyde-free, environmentally friendly wood adhesive that mainly consists of abundant, renewable and readily available soybean flour and a novel curing agent have been developed in a laboratory. The novel curing agent is derived from renewable glycerol. The overall goal of this project is to investigate if a large quantity of this novel curing agent can be produced in a pilot-scale reactor and if this new soy-based adhesive can be used for the production of plywood in a commercial plywood production plant. If this project is successful, the new adhesive is expected to be highly environmentally friendly, based on 1005 renewable materials, and cost-competitive to all competitive wood adhesives on the market. The results of this project will provide a solid foundation for full-scale production of this new adhesive in the near future. This project addresses the program priority:  “A. Green Building Materials and Systems.”