Assessing the technical and environmental performance of wood-based fiber laminates with lignin based phenolic resin systems

Over the past five years, the mobilization of fiber wood assortments for promoting material use, and the integration of supply and conversion chains between biorefineries and the wood panel industry have been intensively investigated. In this regard, the production of fibers and by-products from industrial wood and the substitution of phenolic resin systems with natural polymers such as lignin offer a promising alternative for increasing the bio-based content in composite materials. A direct use of the natural lignin without intermediate downstream processing could support the implementation of energy efficient and short processing routes. But it also could open new challenges such as to identify the extent to which substitution of phenolic resins are technically feasible without compromising the required mechanic performances of the obtained products. For this reason it is needed to identify the material compositions in laminate production, which exhibit good mechanic performance values and in the same time contribute to the reduction of environmental impacts. Considering these constraints in material design, practical results from material testing of different composite materials were used to conduct a comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The environmentally most preferable compositions of beech fiber laminates are identified for the selected product compositions. Furthermore a LCA scenario analysis is applied to compare the environmental preferability of the use of industrial wood assortments in fiber provisioning against the use of industrial wood residues within coupled production schemes of the wood-based bioeconomy. The results show that in nine out of eleven impact categories reduction potentials of up to 39% are achieveable and that the use of residue streams shows a rather limited benefit in realizing further reduction potentials.