Wood-plastic, also known as environmental protection wood, plastic wood and wood for love, is collectively called “WPC” internationally. Invented in Japan in the second half of the last century, it is a new type of composite material made of sawdust, sawdust, bamboo chips, rice husk, wheat straw, soybean hull, peanut shell, bagasse, cotton straw and other low-value biomass fibers. It has the advantages of both plant fiber and plastic, and has a wide range of applications, covering almost all the application fields of logs, plastics, plastic steel, aluminum alloys and other similar composite materials. At the same time, it also solves the recycling problem of waste resources in plastics and wood industries without pollution. Its main characteristics are: resource utilization of raw materials, plasticization of products, environmental protection in use, cost economy, recycling and recycling.
China is a country with poor forestry resources, and the per capita forest stock is less than 10m³, but the annual wood consumption in China has risen sharply. According to official statistics, the growth rate of wood consumption in China has steadily exceeded the GDP growth rate, reaching 423 million cubic meters in 2009. With the development of economy, the shortage of wood is becoming more and more serious. At the same time, due to the improvement of production level, wood processing wastes such as sawdust, shavings, corner wastes and a large number of crop fibers such as straw, rice chaff and fruit shells, which used to be used for firewood in the past, are seriously wasted and have a great destructive impact on the environment. According to statistics, the amount of waste sawdust left by wood processing in China is more than several million tons every year, and the amount of other natural fibers such as rice chaff is tens of millions of tons. In addition, the application of plastic products is increasingly extensive with the development of social economy, and the problem of “white pollution” caused by improper treatment of plastic waste has become a difficult problem in environmental protection. Relevant survey data show that plastic waste accounts for 25%-35% of the total amount of municipal waste, and in China, the annual urban population produces 2.4-4.8 million tons of waste plastic. If these waste materials can be effectively utilized, it will produce great economic and social benefits. Wood-plastic material is a new composite material developed from waste materials.
With the strengthening of people’s awareness of environmental protection, the call for protecting forest resources and reducing the use of new wood is growing louder and louder. Recycling waste wood and plastics with low cost has become a common concern in industry and science, which has promoted and promoted the research and development of wood-plastic composites (WPC), and made substantial progress, and its application has also shown an accelerated development trend. As we all know, waste wood and agricultural fiber can only be incinerated before, and the carbon dioxide produced has a greenhouse effect on the earth, so wood processing plants are trying to find ways to turn it into new products with high added value. At the same time, plastic recycling is also the key development direction of plastic industry technology, and whether plastic can be recycled or not has become one of the important basis for material selection in many plastic processing industries. In this case, wood-plastic composites came into being, and governments and relevant departments all over the world paid great attention to the development and application of this new environmentally friendly material. Wood-plastic composite combines the advantages of wood and plastic, which not only has the appearance like natural wood, but also overcomes its shortcomings. It has the advantages of corrosion resistance, moisture resistance, moth prevention, high dimensional stability, no cracking and no warping. It has higher hardness than pure plastic, and has processability similar to wood. It can be cut and bonded, fixed with nails or bolts, and painted. It is precisely because of the dual advantages of cost and performance that wood-plastic composites have been expanding their application fields and entering new markets in recent years, increasingly replacing other traditional materials.
With the joint efforts of all parties, the domestic manufacturing level of wood-plastic materials/products has jumped to the forefront of the world, and it has obtained the right to have an equal dialogue with wood-plastic enterprises in developed countries in Europe and America. With the vigorous promotion of the government and the renewal of social concepts, the wood-plastic industry will get hotter and hotter as it gets older. There are tens of thousands of employees in China’s wood-plastic industry, and the annual production and sales volume of wood-plastic products is close to 100,000 tons, with an annual output value of more than 800 million yuan. Wood-plastic enterprises are concentrated in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta, and the eastern part far exceeds the central and western parts. The technological level of individual enterprises in the east is relatively advanced, while enterprises in the south have absolute advantages in product quantity and market. The test samples of important scientific and technological representative enterprises in the industry have reached or exceeded the world advanced level. Some large enterprises and multinational groups outside the industry are also paying close attention to the development of wood-plastic industry in China.
Post time: Jul-05-2023