Ecological Solutions for Recovery of Secondary Raw Materials from Post-consumer Fibreboards

Project Information

EcoReFibre

Grant agreement ID: 101057473

DOI

10.3030/101057473

EC signature date 12 May 2022

Start date 1 May 2022

End date 31 October 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 14 819 221,25

EU contribution

€ 11 852 695,51

Coordinated by

SVERIGES LANTBRUKSUNIVERSITET
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EcoReFibre (Ecological Solutions for Recovery of Secondary Raw Materials from Post-consumerFibreboards)

Reporting period: 2023-11-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The goal of EcoReFibre is to develop and demonstrate innovative demos for environmentally sound and commercially viable recycling of end-of-life fibreboards, which currently have no commercially viable recycling methods. The quantities of fibreboard waste are growing exponentially in line with the growth in production capacity, and it is highly likely that more than 60 million tons of fibreboard waste have been created in Europe the last 5 years. This has caught the European recycling sector off-guard. EcoReFibre is crucial to Europe's wood-based panel and wood recycling sectors because of various inter-linked market challenges of the current situation for creating secondary materials from wood waste. EcoReFibre builds a strong pan-European consortium bringing together leading research institutes, companies and European associations who will develop and demonstrate a range of recycling technologies for waste fibreboard. Validation and demonstration of the technologies will take place in an operational environment as system prototypes (TRL7) or in the relevant industrial environment (TRL6). These include a sorting line that is able to efficiently sort post-consumer wood waste, extraction technologies for secondary materials (calibrated wood fines and wood fibres) from the sorted waste fractions, and conversion to valuable products, i.e. various fibreboard and insulation products, particleboard and novel biocomposites. As a major impact, the secondary fibres will substitute up to 25% of the virgin fibres currently used in the manufacture of new fibreboard. The economic viability of the technologies is achieved through a synergistic circular economy approach that exploits multiple valorisation pathways of secondary raw materials. The novel fibreboard recycling technologies are transferrable and exploitable for many other biobased industries. Environmental and social impacts and benefits are integrated into a life cycle perspective.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

At this phase of the project (mid-term), the EcoReFibre project, committed to advancing sustainable practices and reducing waste in Europe, has launched an innovative survey aimed at harnessing collective wisdom to predict fibreboard waste quantities accurately. An intelligent sorting technology has been demonstrated at TLR 6 and is able to sort the fractions “solid wood” and “fibreboard” with a purity of >95% from post-consumer wood waste. Several laboratory trials based on dry processes, using post-consumer fibreboard and production waste, have been performed and generated fines for use in particleboard and bio-composites, all at TRL5. A pilot-scale refining plant and a novel wet process facility have been used been used to determine the settings of the processes required to convert post-consumer fibreboards and solid wood waste into usable fibres for fibreboards and insulation boards at TRL5. Waste fines from fibreboard processing have been tested for novel bio-blocks for construction at TRL5. All results at laboratory scale gave confidence to further fine-tune the technologies in order to achieve pilot demonstrations further down in the project at TRL6-7. In summary, EcoReFibre efforts so far:
(a) Analysed 900 kg wood waste from 24 sites around Paris;
(b) Tested and optimized the sorting process and sorted out 350 kg of fibreboard from 6000 kg of waste wood;
(c) Processed 275 kg fibreboard waste and 75 kg waste wood into recycled 150 kg recycled fibres and 125 kg recycled fines;
(d) Manufactured 890 laboratory-scale fibreboard, biocomposite and insulation products and carried out more than 6000 tests;
(e) Collected environmental and economic costs along the whole value chain.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

EcoReFibre carries out a detailed market study to deliver data that can determine and predict the current and future availability of waste MDF (as the dominant fraction of fibreboard) as a basis for recycling business activities in Europe. Such predictions are not available today for Europe. EcoReFibre also develops a new sorting machine that can sort chipped, recovered wood into three fractions: fibreboard, solid wood, and panel products (like plywood and particleboard). Removing the fibreboard from mixed wood waste assortments not only provides a valuable resource, but it also increases significantly the value of the remaining material. More importantly, removal of fibreboard from recovered wood ensures the long-term future of recycling recovered wood into particleboard, which is currently the only commercially viable method of recycling wood waste and is, therefore, an essential technology for Europe. EcoReFibre technologies include innovative thermo-hydro-mechanical methods, i.e. new ones and adjustments of existing ones for automation and energy saving, that are close to current industrial reality and require minimal investments or alterations of the existing fibreboard production line. In addition, EcoReFibre develops an innovative dry process for converting post-consumer fibreboard waste to fines and chips that can be used for the manufacture of particleboards and biocomposites. A range of products is included because of the very large quantities of fibreboard waste produced for which a single solution is unlikely to be viable.