Some chemical properties of hazelnut husk and its suitability for particleboard production
Introduction
The demand for wood in the forest industry has been growing, but the production of industrial wood from the natural forests continues to decline. The decline in forest resources in developing countries is due to the depletion of the resources and in developed countries due to the withdrawal of forest areas from industrial production for other uses such as recreational areas. Also, there is a significant pressure on standing forest resources as a result of higher demand for wood in forest industry due to the increasing population and new application areas. Consequently, there is a need for alternative resources to substitute wood raw material.
Agricultural residues are excellent alternative materials to substitute wood because they are plentiful, widespread, and easily accessible. Aside from their abundance and renewability, utilization of agricultural residues has advantages for economy, environment, and technology. Traditionally, farmers harvest grain and burn or otherwise dispose the residues (stalks, husk, etc.), but the heightened interest in industrial utilization of agricultural wastes can mean for farmers second income from grain plantings. Burning agricultural residues also causes environmental problems such as air pollution, soil erosion, and a decrease in soil biological activity. Therefore, utilizing agricultural residues not only prevents air pollution due to residual burn which adversely affect air quality and human and environmental health, but also economically profitable for farmers.
The use of agricultural residues as a raw material in the forest industry is not new and it dates back to 1900s for pulp and panel industry. Today chemical pulp and panel products using wheat straw and other crop residues are being commercially manufactured in a number of countries including Turkey. The observed problems with industrial usage of agricultural residues in the forest industry are the high cost of collecting, transporting, and storing the residue material. Some of these problems could be overcome by building local, small scale mills close to the rural areas.
To meet the future demand and to overcome the wood shortage, studies have been conducted to utilize agricultural residues in the forest industry as raw material components for composite production in several countries. Youngquist et al. [1] cites research reports worldwide on the use of non-wood plants for the forest industry. Overall studies pointed to the viability of utilizing agricultural residues in forest industry.
Turkey has been a forest poor country for decades and the shortage of wood and inadequate timber resources results in higher dependency to foreign countries. Consequently, several studies in Turkey examined the practicability of substituting wood-based materials and studied the cotton carpel [2], cotton stalks [3], sunflower stalks [4] and kiwi prunings [5] to produce composite panels.
One of the agricultural residues, hazelnut husk, abundant in Turkey, on the other hand, has not drawn much attention as an agricultural residue that can be used in forest industry. Turkey is the biggest hazelnut producer and exporter in the world producing 73% of the world hazelnut production (400,000–450,000 tons/year) [6]. Therefore, approximately 400,000–500,000 tons/year of husk residue is estimated to be burned or left in the field after harvest and any possible usage of which will yield economic as well as environmental dividends. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the potential utilization of hazelnut husk in tree-layer particleboard production as supplement and to alleviate the shortage of raw material in forest industry.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
Hazelnut husk residues used to produce particleboard collected from the field right after hazelnut harvest in Düzce, Turkey. The residues were cleaned from impurities, chipped and then screened to obtain appropriate particle size for particleboard production. Particles collected on the 1.5 and 0.8 mm sieves were used in middle-layer and surface-layer on panel production, respectively.
Density determination of the hazelnut husk was carried out according to the water displacement method. For
Results and discussion
The density of the hazelnut husk is found to be 0.23 g/cm3 (±0.21). This finding shows that the density of hazelnut husk is much lower compared to the wood raw material (0.40–0.75 g/cm3) [8] and kiwi stalks (0.50 g/cm3) but close to the cotton stalks (0.28 g/cm3).
Certain chemical properties of the hazelnut husk were listed in Table 3. A comparison between husk and other crop residues and wood species (Table 3) indicated that hazelnut husk had the lowest holocellulose and α-cellulose content. In
Conclusions
The results indicated that the manufacture of particleboards from hazelnut husk wastes alone by using UF, MUF, and PF adhesives is technically feasible. It was shown that hazelnut husks could be used as a valuable material for the production of particleboards. Hazelnut husk gave the lowest holocellulose and α-cellulose contents, but the lignin content in hazelnut husk was higher compared to other crop residues and wood species. In terms of solubility, hazelnut husk had the highest cold and hot
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