Environmental Update Soy-Based Wood Adhesives and the Environment
Soy-based adhesives have been used in the manufacture of common wood products such as plywood for over 70 years. While soy adhesives are still used in some specific applications, the introduction in the late 1930s of urea-formaldehyde and phenol-formaldehyde resins derived from petroleum or natural gas provided performance advantages and lower costs than the older soy products. Today, these resins and newer petro-based products, such as methylene diisocyanate (MDI), have replaced soy and other natural products as the basic resins in wood adhesives.
Environmental concerns, including the need for adhesives made from a renewable feedstock, have caused a resurgence of interest in developing new soy-based products for the wood adhesives industry. The United Soybean Board has funded both fundamental and applied research with a goal of developing new soy-based adhesives that can be used alone or with existing products to provide equal or superior performance, good manufacturing economies and environmental advantages. Current research is concentrating on soy-hydrolyzate and soy-flour adhesives.