Functionalized Wood Flours for Improved Composite Materials

Wood flour is a common byproduct of the forestry industry. It is used as a filler in plasticcomposites to make products such as decking materials but due to the hydrophilicity of the wood(resulting from surface hydroxyl groups) it is difficult to blend into the hydrophobic polymermatrix. This results in agglomeration of the wood particles and creates voids in the polymerreducing the mechanical strength of the composite. One method for improving the physicalproperties of the composite is to chemically functionalize the wood flour so that the hydroxyls arereplaced with hydrophobic groups thereby improving dispersion in the polymer matrix. This is apromising approach but academic investigations to date have not yet led to a process for makingcomposites at the commercial scale. To that end in this project TDA Research Inc. (TDA)proposes to develop a wood flour functionalization process that can manufacture high valuecomposite materials from forest waste products. We will use novel computational techniques toidentify promising surface modifying agents (SMAs) which we will then test experimentally byfunctionalizing wood flours and incorporating them into polyolefin-based composites. This iterativeprocess will allow us to quickly identify the appropriate SMA and the optimal loading of themodified wood flour in the final composite. The end result of this project will be a newcommercializable process that will both create improved composite materials as well as allow woodflour composites to be used in new applications thereby using a larger percentage of the tree.