Manufacture of woodceramics chip tiles from waste wood

Approximately 550 million tons of waste wood are generated annually in Japan and only about 22 percent of this waste is recycled. Most of the unrecycled waste is used for landfill or is incinerated. Both of these disposal methods are harmful to the environment. In an attempt to develop ways to effectively utilize this waste product, a woodceramics chip tile has been developed using a mixture of woodceramics chips and gravel or zeolite. Woodceramics are a new porous carbon material obtained from carbonized wood-based materials impregnated with phenolic resin in a vacuum furnace. In this study, woodceramics chips were made from waste apple wood (Malus pumila Mill). Two types of woodceramics chip tiles were made, one of various mixtures of woodceramics chips and gravel and the other of various mixtures of woodceramics chips and zeolite. The tiles were subjected to water porosity (i.e., the time it takes for water to soak through the tile), snow melt, and mechanical property tests to ascertain the commercial possibilities of woodceramics chip tiles. Water passed through the gravel tile faster than through the zeolite tile. The total quantity of snow melting over 3 hours had a tendency to increase when the ratio of woodceramics chips to gravel or zeolite increased.