Combustion Emissions Analysis of Wood-Based Waste Processing-Materials

Abstract

The pursuit of economic development by the human has come at a great cost to the animals and plants of this planet, and has damaged the quality of our air and water. In the last 100 years more problems have come to threaten the environment, such as vanishing forests, acid rain, the burning of fossil-fuels and global warming. Currently, researchers are focusing on so-called “eco-materials” that make effective and environmentally friendly use of natural resources, such as the recycling of industrial wastes, the development of new environmentally friendly materials, etc. The evaluated items are included the frontier, amenity and adjustment of materials (Okuma, 1998). Besides, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), started in the early 1970s, is a method that considers energy and raw material consumption, different types of emissions and other important factors related to a specific product’s entire life cycle. The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) published the widely accepted series of guidelines and definitions of LCA, and the ISO 14040-14043 is considered the LCA standard (Bras & Roman, 2006). Recycling of wood products, as one item of the LCAs, generally includes two kinds of methods. The first type is recycling of discarded forest products or resource-recovered (renewable) materials, which means to develop new wood-based materials in accordance with the principle of cascade utilization (Akiyama, 1998). The second type is the waste disposal options for spent various wood materials, including demolition, combustion and/or landfilling (Jang, 1997; Kobayashi et al., 2000). However, discarded the wood-based waste processing-materials, especially wood or/and wood-based materials that have been processed with different types of adhesives, coatings and preservatives, are extremely difficult to be recycled as a raw material, because these materials for wood products used cannot presently be used as a raw material again (Lin et al., 2001), and the waste stage has a very significant impact on the life cycle assessment results (Esser et al., 2000). As we know, carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of elemental compounds in the atmosphere (air) and a factor in photosynthesis and absorption. CO2 is also the best-known greenhouse gas because it is capable of increasing the average global temperature depending on the sensitivity of the atmosphere (such as the concentration of CO2) to greenhouse forcing (Allaby, 2000; Aplin et al., 2000). Carbon monoxide (CO), one of tasteless, colorless and nonodorous gases, is produced primarily by car exhaust and incomplete combustion of organic materials. Hence, CO can easily be inhaled and combined with the hemoglobin in blood,