Project description
New process recovers wood fibre from used medium-density fibreboard
Medium-density fibreboard (MDF) is an engineered wood product made by breaking down virgin wood into wood fibres, blending it with wax and resin, and forming it into a mat that is consolidated and cured under high pressure and temperature. Over time, MDF has evolved into a highly sophisticated product designed to meet specific end-use requirements. Around 45 % of MDF is used in furniture, 32 % in laminate flooring, and 23 % in construction, mouldings or panelling. With EU funding of the MataDOR project, MDF Recovery developed a patented processing technology that enables the recovery of high-quality wood fibre from waste MDF. The new technology addresses the lack of efficient methods of recycling the high amounts of MDF produced each year.
Objective
Challenge and solution: MDF - medium density fibreboard is a wood-based panel product produced from virgin wood, either logs or wood chips. The virgin wood is refined into fibres that are blended with resin and wax, dried, then formed into a mat that is consolidated and cured under pressure and heat. Over the years, MDF has evolved into a highly sophisticated product designed to meet specific end-use requirements. Around 45% of MDF is used in furniture, 32% used in laminate flooring with the remaining 23% used in construction, mouldings, panelling etc.. There is 19.5M tons of MDF produced in Europe every year1 and an estimated 2.73M2 tons wasted within the supply chain.
The Challenge: With almost 20M tons of MDF being produced every year in the EU (70M tons globally), it is unacceptable that none of this material is recycled. There is a clear and obvious need for a technology based solution to this problem. The challenge for MDF Recovery is to validate and commercialise its own technology to ensure that MDF recycling is considered ‘normal’ in future and that the opportunity to be first to market is taken.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineering
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringthermodynamic engineering
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- agricultural sciencesagriculture, forestry, and fisheriesforestry
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Programme(s)
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020
See other projects for this callSub call
H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-1
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
LL58 8BB BEAUMARIS, GWYNEDD
United Kingdom
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.