Development of Soybean-Based Wood Adhesives in North America

摘要

Introduction The history of soybean-based adhesives used in plywood manufacturing can be traced back to 70 years ago, but they were later replaced by synthetic wood adhesives derived from petroleum chemicals such as phenol-formaldehyde and urea-formaldehyde resins. With the rapidly rising oil prices and increasing environmental concerns, development of new soybean-based resins has attracted great attentions in the wood products industry. In the United States, several research groups have been studying soybean-based adhesives. A proprietary soybean adhesive formulation now on the market has been patented and applied for plywood production. Another proprietary soybean adhesive product is being developed for OSB manufacturing. A soybean adhesive formula has been used successfully in finger-jointing green wood to replace 50% PRF resin in a US mill. In Canada, the PRF/soybean resin system was successfully tested for finger-jointing at FPinnovations-Forintek and also in Canadian mills.