{"id":80137,"date":"2020-10-19T07:35:28","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T05:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=80137"},"modified":"2025-10-08T15:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T13:21:13","slug":"from-grapevine-waste-to-a-sustainable-building-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/from-grapevine-waste-to-a-sustainable-building-material\/","title":{"rendered":"From grapevine waste to a sustainable building material"},"content":{"rendered":"

Agriculture, one of Australia\u2019s most important industries, produces millions of tons of plant and crop waste each year. This waste comprises of a diverse range of wood-like materials \u2013 like rice husks, flax shives, wheat straws, bagasse, canola stalks, oat hulls and grapevines.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Globally, crop waste production is approximately 3.7 billion tonnes per annum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite the abundance of this waste, there are very few ways to recycle such a massive amount of material, with most of it typically going back into the soil or being burned. Both of these processes release large amounts of greenhouse gases into the environment.<\/p>\n

So, finding ways to reuse and recycle this crop waste is imperative in a future where there\u2019s increased competition for resources. It also enables us to simultaneously boost the economy and help the environment.<\/p>\n

Our breakthrough research<\/a> from the Department of Chemical Engineering\u2019s Ellis Research Group<\/a> led by Professor Amanda Ellis, shows how these waste materials, including grapevine prunings \u2013 an unwanted yet common type of crop waste \u2013 can be made into useful building materials.<\/p>\n

Particleboard in Construction<\/h3>\n

Particleboard is a staple of the construction industry, produced industrially at an enormous scale by mixing wood chips with an adhesive resin.<\/p>\n

This mixture is then pressed under high temperatures to form a solid board \u2013 resulting in a cheap and durable product that is often used in materials ranging from flooring to furniture.<\/p>\n

As the human population increases worldwide, the global demand for particleboard is growing rapidly<\/a> and the need for woodchip is rapidly outstripping supply.<\/p>\n

Particleboard\u2019s niche within the construction industry is a result of the fact that it\u2019s commonly produced from post-industrial recycled waste wood and sold at a correspondingly low price \u2013 but the increasing demand and cost of production are rapidly making it less attractive.<\/p>\n

By making particleboard from another low-cost source, we would ensure the viability of the industry, and the future of an environmentally-friendly building material.<\/p>\n

It is at the nexus of this challenge of excessive agricultural waste and particleboard\u2019s rapid price hike that our team, in the Department of Chemical Engineering<\/a>, found a potential answer.<\/p>\n

From waste to resource<\/h3>\n

Grapevine prunings represent a major source of agricultural crop waste globally, with an estimated 42 million tonnes disposed of yearly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These are the stems and branches that are cut off grapevines before and after harvest.<\/p>\n

Grapes are grown almost everywhere but importantly, in countries like China, the United States, Australia, France, and Spain \u2013 which are all major particleboard producers as well.<\/p>\n

Our research<\/a>, published in Waste Management<\/em><\/a>, investigated the use of grapevine prunings in particleboard.<\/p>\n

Our team used locally sourced grapevines from a winery in regional Victoria, while the ARC Training Centre for Chemical Industries<\/a> provided an industrial contact to make and test the particleboard.<\/p>\n

The grapevine was easily milled into chips using existing equipment and mixed with softwood chips and resin to make hybrid grapevine-softwood particleboards.<\/p>\n

By adding as little as 10 per cent grapevines into the particleboard, the boards exceeded all industry strength and durability standards, without changing any aspect of the existing process.<\/p>\n

Making a sustainable switch<\/h3>\n

While 10 per cent doesn\u2019t sound like a lot, the scale of particleboard production globally means that even replacing as little as this much of the soft woodchips relieves the pressure on supply while also reducing grapevine waste.<\/p>\n

In fact, substituting 10 per cent of softwood for grapevine in Australian particleboard production alone could reduce the demand for wood by tens of thousands of tonnes annually.<\/p>\n

From an industrial perspective, these considerations are important as they enable a switch to more sustainable materials without needing to alter the strength, durability and reliability of their products.<\/p>\n

The next steps in our research involve running a pilot trial of grapevine particleboards in a factory and conducting a business case analysis to determine the overall cost of replacing wood with grapevine.<\/p>\n

But our findings have the potential to not only reduce the amount of pollution from crop waste disposal, but to also ensure particleboard can remain a cheap, staple construction material into the next century.<\/p>\n

This work has been financially supported through the ARC Training Centre for Chemical Industries.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agriculture, one of Australia\u2019s most important industries, produces millions of tons of plant and crop waste each year. This waste comprises of a diverse range of wood-like materials \u2013 like rice husks, flax shives, wheat straws, bagasse, canola stalks, oat hulls and grapevines. Globally, crop waste production is approximately 3.7 billion tonnes per annum. Despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5838,5842,10416,11749],"supplier":[6861],"class_list":["post-80137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioeconomy","tag-biomass","tag-circulareconomy","tag-construction","supplier-university-of-melbourne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80137"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=80137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}