Carbon storage in wood products

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas causing global warming. The combustion of fossil fuels produces around 21.3 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. It has been estimated that natural processes can only absorb about half of that amount, so there is a net increase of 10.65 billion tons of atmospheric CO2 per year. Air pollution monitoring readings across the globe rose at the highest rate on record in 2015 and 2016. If fossil resources are used as energy resources then that means increase of carbon in the atmosphere and increase of CO2 in the atmosphere; if biomass resources are used as energy sources the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase, however the total amount of carbon in atmosphere will remain the same. To find out the actual amounts of CO2 that can avoided by storing carbon in bioproducts it is important to do an analysis evaluating the amounts of CO2 avoided by storing carbon in the product versus CO2 emitted during the production processes. CO2 emitted during the production processes of the bioproduct should be reduced to minimum. To verify the proposed method of evaluating the amounts of stored carbon versus the emissions during production process three popular wood products were analysed – oriented strand board (OSB), medium density fibreboard (MDF) and particle board (PB).