bioresources. com
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE
as selecting green materials, using renewable materials, and adopting cleaner processes and the eco-design approach (Luz et al. 2010). Composite boards for furniture in China are main panels, which are made from petroleum-based adhesives and have caused several negative environmental impacts, especially because of the emission of volatile organic compounds and formaldehyde during the production phase (Li et al. 2009). As a by-product of the paper industry, industrial lignin has been used in a wide variety of fields in the past few years (Li et al. 2015; Ten and Vermerris 2015). Industrial lignin is used as a low-value fuel in paper-pulp manufacturing. In view of the recent focus of the community on sustainable development and carbon-neutral products, there have been several discussions and research on using lignin-based binders. Various kinds of lignin-based binders, such as industrial lignin alone or mixed with cross-linking agents, have been investigated in the last decade (Li and Geng 2004; Geng and Li 2006; Liu and Li 2006; Mancera et al. 2011; Duval et al. 2013; Privas and Navard 2013; Aracri et al. 2014; Zhang et al. 2017). However, industrial lignin has been found to be unsatisfactory as a binder in boards because of the relatively low reactivity of its chemical structure. Therefore, the development of sustainable materials requires a more effective use of modified lignin (Ikeda et al. 2017). For instance, a major amount of research has investigated the manufacturing of nonconventional fiberboards by using a natural binder made with modified ammonium lignosulfonate (Yuan et al. 2014; Hu and Guo 2015). Currently, the furniture manufacturing industry seems to be important from economic and social standpoints and from the perspective of environmentally compatible industries (Azizi et al. 2016). As an effective and valuable tool, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is used to assess the environmental impact of materials, products, and service systems, with the intent of assessing the environmental damage caused over the whole life of a product (ISO 14040 2006). These trends reinforce the importance of using LCA for sustainable design procedures and for evaluating the novel material technologies and production processes that impact the environment in remarkable ways (Linkosalmi et al. 2016; Kirchain Jr. et al. 2017). Several studies have evaluated wood-based products and furniture from an LCA perspective. These studies have focused on conventional wooden material selection and assessment, such as standard particle boards, fiberboards, and hardboards (Iritani et al. 2015; Nakano et al. 2018). In contrast, only a few studies have applied LCA to furniture manufactured with nonconventional green boards. In China, no LCA studies have been performed to investigate the till date on furniture made with green wooden panels based on lignin-based binders. The case study presented in this article focused on a complete wardrobe with new materials for the wardrobe components. A previous study used LCA to investigate a preliminary case on the comparative environmental performance of conventional medium- density fiberboard (MDF) and a nonconventional green board called hybrid modified ammonium lignosulfonate (HMAL)/wood fiber (WF) composite (HWC) (Yuan and Guo 2017). For HMAL, ammonium lignosulfonate was oxidized using H 2 O 2 at 60 °C for 30 min, then mixed with PEI solutions according to the MAL/PEI weight ratio of 7:1. To enhance the utilization of novel wood composites, sustainable strategies were analyzed by assessing the environmental impact of a wardrobe composed of HWC. This study evaluated the environmental impacts of using an HWC wardrobe. In the process, this study compared those impacts with the environmental impacts caused by current wood products made of conventional MDF over the entire life cycle of the wardrobe. The study intended to assess the effects of replacing the raw materials and current binder material
2741
Li et al . (2019 ). “Wardrobe case study in China,” B io R esources 14(2), 2740-2758.
Made with FlippingBook Digital Publishing Software