The environmental impact of wood compared to other building materials.

One of the positive aspects of using wood in construction is the environmental benefits that this can potentially bring. However, manufacturers of all construction products and materials make claims about the ‘environmental friendliness’ of their products, making it exceedingly difficult for the end user to make informed choices about the advisability of using one product over another. This study presents an analysis of the published environmental product declarations of timber products (fibreboard, particleboard, oriented strandboard, glulam/laminated veneer lumber, sawn and dried timber) and compares this data with that published in the widely available and quoted University of Bath Inventory of Carbon and Energy database. Comparison is also made with some common non-biogenic building materials (concrete, brick, cement and steel).

2016

Accessibility of hydroxyl groups in anhydride modified wood as measured by deuterium exchange and saponification

Acetylated wood (WAc) shows improved properties largely due to the reduced amount of water in its cell wall, but the exact mechanism of water reduction remains unclear. Acetylation reduces hydroxyl (OH) content by acetyl (Ac) substitution but may also limit water access to unmodified OH groups by steric hindrance. In the present work, the accessibility of OH groups in acetylated or propionylated Radiata pine (Pinus radiata D. Don) wood (WAc and WPr) was investigated by deuterium exchange, saponification in sodium hydroxide followed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis and weight percentage gain determination of the modified samples. Acetylation reduced OH accessibility (OHA) to a greater extent than would be predicted, if OH substitution were the only responsible mechanism for accessibility reduction. The combination of deuterium exchange and saponification results provides strong evidence that steric hindrance plays a key role in reduction of water accessibility to unmodified OH groups in WAc. The supramolecular architecture of WPr samples seems to be modified by the propionylation reaction, which leads to increased OHA at low levels of substitution. This suggests that molecular restructuring within the cell wall exposes new OH groups after propionylation. At higher levels of substitution, however, the WPr exhibited less OHA than expected indicating steric hindrance from the propionyl groups.

2017

Comparative assessment for biogenic carbon accounting methods in carbon footprint of products: a review study for construction materials based on forest products.

The forest and building sector is of major importance in climate change mitigation and therefore construction materials based on forest products are of great interest. While energy efficiency has had a large focus in climate change mitigation in the building sector, the carbon footprint of the construction material is gaining relevance. The carbon footprint of construction materials can vary greatly from one type to another, the building sector is consequently demanding documentation of the carbon footprint of the materials used. Using an environmental product declaration (EPD) is an objective and standardised solution for communicating the environmental impacts of construction products and especially their carbon footprint. Nevertheless, it is challenging to include the features of forest products as pools of carbon dioxide. There is currently a focus on research into methods for the accounting of sequestered atmospheric carbon dioxide and also implementation of these methods into technical standards. This paper reviews the recent research and technical standards in this field to promote a common understanding and to propose requirements for additional information to be included in EPDs of forest-based products. The main findings show the need for reporting the contribution of biogenic carbon to the total on greenhouse gas emissions and removals over the product’s lifecycle. In order to facilitate the implementation of more advanced methods from research, the EPD should also include more detailed information of the wood used, in particular species and origin.

2017

Life cycle assessment – opportunities for forest products sector.

The utilization of wood in long life products, such as construction materials in the built environment, is an effective way to optimize the use of natural resources while also reducing negative environmental impacts. However, the environmental benefits of timber, especially in the construction sector, are not always clearly understood. As a renewable material, timber is available in perpetuity if it is obtained from sustainably managed forests. Using timber in the built environment stores sequestered atmospheric carbon dioxide in long-life products and timber can be incinerated at the end of its life (or its multiple lives) with energy recovery, thereby minimizing demolition waste. The built environment effectively acts as an extension of the forest. The question is: how should the environmental benefits of timber use be measured and presented? To answer that question, this paper offers an overview of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methods the forest products sector could broadly apply to evaluate and report the sustainability performance of wood. In addition to environmental LCA, the paper also incorporates an overview of organizational LCA (O-LCA), and social LCA (S-LCA). Furthermore, this paper discusses environmental product declarations (EPDs) and construction standards aiming to enable better comparability of the environmental performance of products. This review paper concludes with a discussion of where the opportunities for the forest products sector lie and the need for joint actions within the sector. The importance of including the storage of sequestered atmospheric carbon dioxide into the standards assessing the environmental impact is emphasized.

2017

On the applicability of the Flory-Huggins and Vrentas models for describing the sorption isotherms of wood.

This paper discusses the applicability of the Flory–Huggins and Vrentas sorption models for studying the sorption behaviour of wood. This theory was originally developed to explain the sorption behaviour of glassy polymers and was further extended to account for hysteresis effects. The model also has the advantage that, in principle, it does not require adjustable parameters for fitting and can be calculated independently of the sorption isotherm data. It was tested against some sorption isotherms and satisfactory fits to the data were obtained for both the absorption and desorption data. The values of the parameters required for satisfactory fitting were realistic, except for the magnitude of the glass transition temperature of water. As far as the authors are aware, this is the first reported study of the use of the Vrentas model to explain sorption and hysteresis in wood.

2017

The water vapour sorption characteristics and kinetics of different wool types.

The water vapour sorption behaviour of a range of sheep wool types and alpaca was studied using dynamic vapour sorption. Sorption isotherms were interpreted using the polymer sorption model developed by Vrentas and Vrentas. Satisfactory fits were obtained for absorption and desorption isotherms with the adjustment of parameters outside the scope of what is allowed. This is possibly because the underlying Flory–Huggins approach does not take into account any clustering of sorbate within the polymer. Water clustering in the wool fibre, determined using the Zimm–Lundberg clustering function, starts above a fibre moisture content of approximately 20%. Sorption kinetics were analysed using the parallel exponential kinetics model, providing excellent fits and allowed for calculation of a fibre modulus at different relative humidities; the values were reasonable at the upper end of the hygroscopic range, but were overestimated at the lower end of the range.

2017

An examination of the potential for the use of the Maillard reaction to modify wood

Finding efficient ways to decrease wood decay caused by fungi is an important issue in the timber construction. A possible way to avoid wood decay by fungi is by reducing the water content of wood, since water is a primary condition for fungal growth. Bulking of the wood cell wall by chemical reagents occupies the space where water normally occurs. This also improves the dimensional stability of the modified wood. The aim of the work was to react non-toxic reagents using a Maillard type of reaction in the wood cell wall. Wood was soaked in different aqueous solutions with a primary amine and a sugar as the main constituents. The wood was thereafter cured in an oven at 120°C. The preliminary results showed that the use of the Maillard reaction for wood modification is a promising method and is worth further research.

2018

Characterization of moisture in acetylated and propionylated radiata pine using low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LFNMR) relaxometry

Moisture in radiata pine (Pinus radiata D. Don) earlywood (EW), which was acetylated or propionylated to various degrees, was measured by low-field nuclear magnetic resonance (LFNMR) relaxometry. Spin-spin relaxation times (T2) were determined for fully saturated samples at 22 and −18°C. T2 values for EW lumen water increased with increasing acetylation weight percentage gain (WPG), perhaps caused by the less hydrophilic acetylated wood (AcW) surface. Cell wall water (WCW) and the water in pits and small voids also showed increasing T2 values as a function of WPG but with a weaker tendency. A possible explanation is the counteracting effects of decreased hydrophilicity and reduced moisture content (MC) of these water populations at higher levels of acetylation. The evaluation of propionylation on WCW T2 data was complicated by peak splitting in the relaxation spectrum. Constant T2 values for void water populations at various WPG levels for propionylated samples indicate a modification gradient in the cell wall. Fiber saturation point (FSP) was significantly reduced by both modifications. Slightly higher FSP values for propionylated samples suggest that physical bulking is not the only factor causing moisture exclusion in AcW. But this interpretation is tentative because of the possibility of cell wall damage caused by propionylation.

2018

Polyesterification of wood using sorbitol and citric acid under aqueous conditions

The aim of this research is to determine if the polyesterification of sorbitol and citric acid in wood has a future potential as a wood modification process. Pine wood was impregnated with an aqueous solution containing citric acid and sorbitol and was thereafter cured at 103 or 140°C for 18 hours. The dimensional stability and leaching resistance were studied for both modification temperatures. The leachates from the modified wood samples were analysed by HPLC and the susceptibility to decay and staining fungi were studied. Impregnated samples cured at 140°C showed a permanent (leach-resistant) increased dimensional change, but samples treated at 103°C were not stable to leaching. Treated samples cured at 103 and 140°C showed significant resistance to white-rot (Trametes versicolor) and brown-rot decay (Postia placenta) after a leaching procedure. Furthermore, samples cured at 103 and 140°C (leached and unleached) were significantly less susceptible to blue-stain fungi than the untreated controls.

2018

A comparison of the environmental impacts of different categories of insulation materials

More than sixty environmental product declarations of insulation materials (glass wool, mineral wool, expanded polystyrene, extruded polystyrene, polyurethane, foam glass and cellulose) have been examined and the published information for global warming potential (GWP) and for embodied energy (EE) has been analysed and is presented. A peer-review literature survey of the data for GWP and EE associated with the different insulation products is also included. The data for GWP (kg carbon dioxide equivalents) and EE (megajoules) is reported in terms of product mass or as a functional unit (FU) (1 m2 of insulation with R = 1 m2 K/W). Data for some classes of insulation material (such as glass wool) exhibit a relatively narrow range of values when reported in terms of weight of product or as a functional unit. Other classes of insulation material exhibit much wider distributions of values (e.g., expanded polystyrene). When reported per weight of product, the hydrocarbon-based insulation materials exhibit higher GWP and EE values compared to inorganic or cellulosic equivalents. However, when compared on an FU basis this distinction is no longer apparent and some of the cellulosic based materials (obtained by refining of wood chips) show some of the highest EE values. The relationship between the EE and GWP per kg of insulation product has also been determined as being 15.8 MJ per kg CO2 equivalents.

2018

The environmental impacts of wood compared to other building materials

The Norwegian government has set clear targets for reducing the consumption of fossil energy and greenhouse gas emissions. The construction sector can help to achieve these goals by: Building energy-efficient buildings; Using low-energy energy materials; Using building materials as storage for atmospheric carbon dioxide.

2018

LCA database of environmental impacts to inform material selection process

The purpose of this report is to provide advice on relevant LCA data for use by project partners. The deliverable is a database which gives environmental impact data on Global Warming Potential and Embodied Energy for materials and processes relevant to the project.

2018

Water up-take in fuel pellets studied by Dynamic Vapour Sorption (DVS) analysis and its potential role in self-heating during storage

The self-heating of wood fuel pellets is a well-recognised problem causing fire incidents in the storage of the pellets as well as severe intoxication of workers by elevated carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide levels and oxygen depletion. Possible factors contributing to the self-heating are considered to be autoxidation and microbiological activity, while the role and contribution to the temperature rise caused by the heat of condensation from water vapour condensing during fast changes in the relative air humidity is less investigated. Using Dynamic Vapour Sorption, the water uptake was measured at 25 °C when increasing the RH from 40 to 80% using 35 fuel pellet samples covering a broad variation in pellet raw materials and process equipment found in Europe (both pilot and industrial scale). The equilibrium total water uptake and speed of the uptake were determined. Total water uptake was 4.56% (range 3.69–6.86%) with no systematic difference found related to the scale of production (industry as compared to pilot plant). In addition, the variations within larger groups of raw material (pine, spruce and pine/spruce mixtures) were relatively small, and the mean water uptake did not differ significantly between these groups. An estimation of the overall potential heat release (when raising the RH% from 40 to 80%) made from the experimental results, taking the early fast water uptake process into consideration (2 h counting for half the total uptake), showed that a heat release of 47 kJ/kg of pellets (range 12–63 kJ/kg) and a potential temperature increase of 45 °C is possible. This estimation clearly demonstrates that the heat of condensation released during water condensation in a pellets silo or in a pellets pile should be expected to be a major contributing factor to initiating temperature rise incidents. In addition, such a temperature increase is expected to assist the initiation of, and to increase the speed of autoxidation of fatty acids and other compounds in the material that will further contribute to a temperature rise. Thus, the results in this study have the potential to improve the basis for modelling the self-heating process in pellet silos/storage and to predict the status of a certain pellet batch by presenting a broad basis for expected variation in the important parameters (specific heat capacity CP and thermal conductivity λeff) influencing the process, and thus aid in taking preventive actions like venting or shifting the pellets to another silo/pile to reduce risk for self-heating and possible fire.

2019

Effect of methyltrimethoxysilane impregnation on the cell wall porosity and water vapour sorption of archaeological waterlogged oak

This paper presents the water vapour sorption behaviour of degraded archaeological oak (Quercus robur L.) and the influence of methyltrimethoxysilane treatment on hygroscopicity. Wood samples (archaeological and undegraded recent oak) were treated with methyltrimethoxysilane using an oscillating pressure method. Moisture properties of the samples were determined using a dynamic vapour sorption system, and the surface area and porosity of treated and untreated waterlogged wood, previously dried using different methods, were characterised using a nitrogen sorption method. It was found that the silane modification resulted in a decrease in the equilibrium moisture content of archaeological oak samples from 23.7 to 19.4% for heartwood and from 23.3 to 10.0% for sapwood, respectively. After correction for silane content, however, the maximum equilibrium moisture content of the treated samples was 23.6% for heartwood and 21% for sapwood, which points rather at a bulking mechanism than chemical modification by silane. The results of the surface area and porosity measurements indicate that methyltrimethoxysilane is deposited in the cell wall and thus helps to preserve the microstructure of archaeological waterlogged wood.

2019