Recycling of Laminated Boards, 1997 Asian Laminates Symposium Proceedings

Laminates get increasingly important in the surface coating of wood based panels like particleboard and MDF. In recent years they became leading in the coating of floor, wall and furniture panels. Compared to veneers and also lacquers they have a lot of advantages considering availability, processing and resistance. In addition to this they also have considerable advantages in the recycling of products made of laminated boards.

A recently developed process allows it to disintegrate most types of coated particleboard and MDF. The laminated boards are first pre-broken into handy pieces. Then they are impregnated with a solution consisting of water and small additives of acid and urea. When heating up the impreg-nated material to about 110 °C it is disintegrated after app. 20 minutes. Now the particles and fibres are separated by screening from the coatings. The recovered particles and fibres are undamaged. They can be processed like virgin wood.

Particleboards and MDF produced from the recycled mate-rial do not show any difference in technological properties and formaldehyde emission to boards exclusively made from virgin wood. The thermal use of the separated laminates can contribute to cover the energy need of the disintegration process. Currently two industrial plants with an annual capacity of 50.000 tons (abs. dry) recovered particles each are in operation. Two more are under construction.