“The new products obtained from this recovery process are aimed at achieving zero waste generation at Garnica’s plants”
TECNALIA collaborates with Garnica to recover lignocellulosic waste from the industrial production of wood-based panels
The new circularity and sustainability policies encourage companies to create strategies to put an end to industrial waste and turn this waste into raw materials to produce new products and materials with high added value. For this reason, the Garnica Group and TECNALIA have got together to recover the wood sanding dust generated during the industrial production of plywood panels and incorporate it into new biocomposite materials.
The new process is aimed at achieving zero waste generation at Garnica's plants, and the development of new, more sustainable, high performance products for the construction sector.
The Garnica Group is dedicated to producing and marketing plywood panels, and has five production plants in Spain which produce around 17,500 m3 of sanding dust per year. With this collaboration, Garnica is looking to:
- Increase the added value of sanding dust by producing new products, in order to optimise the production process and minimise waste.
- Create new products with high insulation and structural performance using this raw material.
New product obtained from this recovery process
The product that has been developed is a sandwich panel, made up of a rigid biocomposite board on the outer sides and a foam at the core. This product is based on the circularity of Garnica waste and has shown promising results in terms of mechanical properties, reaction to fire and thermal conductivity.
80% of the rigid panel developed is made up of sanding dust, which improves the reaction to fire values by fireproofing the sanding dust. Water absorption has been reduced by 40% through a hydrophobisation process. The hydrophobisation process of the sanding dust has made it possible to produce low-density foams with a sanding dust content of up to 30%.
The thermal conductivity of the foams developed in the project has been shown to be very similar to that of other commercial insulation products such as rock wool and glass fibre.
