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2009 International Wood Composites Symposium & Technical Workshop Review
 Jerry Winandy, Principal, Winandy and Assoc. presented a future vision for optimally using wood and biomass.
Some may agree with it and some may not, he noted, but “it is a vision for what we have to do to turn everything around” and may change the face of the industry.
The two most relevant drivers for the composites industry to bring about this change are the recent disruption in financial markets and consumer confidence, he said. Economic and engineering viability are both dependent on those factors. The most important relevant technologies driving the change are nanotechnology and bioenergy.
“In an integrated biomass technology system, you would take out a certain amount of chemicals from an entire array,” Winandy explained. “Some of the material would go into composites, some onto paper and some into energy. Based on your location, based on the materials available to you, at a particular time and at particular prices, that whole quantity can change, and if we understand the fundamental implications of all the materials, their properties, we can change on the fly the production process so that we’re constantly modifying our system and making the optimum solution from a value-added system.”
“In cellulosic ethanol, lignin currently is not used so we have to find a way to use that as a value-added product. It can be burned for bioenergy or it could be converted into a chemical feedstock for a number of pharmaceuticals or adhesives. The cellulose can be de-polymerized – right now we get a 50 percent yield but we can get a much stronger yields with different systems.”
“There’s no reason why we can only get 50 percent yield out of cellulosic material. We think we can get 70. The probability of success for current commercial efforts is not known but this is a time for sitting back and re-evaluating where we’ve been and where we’re going. If we stay on the same course we’re on we’ll probably have the same boom and bust cycle in the forest products industry that we’ve experienced for years and years, as opposed to becoming more integrated and being able to move into higher value products.” Government incentives are there right now, Winandy noted, go out and get them.
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