Surface & Panel - Q2 2022

Page 19

Is It High Time for Hemp-Based Composite Panels? 2022 MAY BE THE YEAR HEMP RISES IN POPULARITY

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BY DAVID KOENIG

he continuing volatility in wood prices may finally create an opening for a new generation of composite products that use hemp in place of wood fiber. For more than 30 years, manufacturers have been trying to turn hemp and other agrifiber composites into substitutes for wood boards and panels. The most successful results have used wheat straw, but there have also been attempts that employed rice straw, grass straw, cotton stalks, soybean stalks, kenaf, and hemp. The plants are all plentiful, adaptable, and lightning-fast to grow. Hemp, for instance, can grow from seed to harvest in three to four months. In fact, hemp—the non-psychoactive form of the cannabis plant— is a natural as a building material. It has been used for thousands of years for rope and continues to rise in popularity in insulation (either

as pressed coreboard or hemp wool) and as a concrete substitute (called hempcrete). Traditionally, the most significant limitations have been legality (a problem solved with an amendment to the U.S. Farm bill in 2018) and cost (hemp insulation and hempcrete can cost more than the products they replace by 50% or more). However, recent wood price spikes have made hemp-based lumber and wood-panel substitutes considerably less expensive. Typically, the substitutes are produced in ways reminiscent of the production of traditional engineered wood products, including MDF, OSB, I-joists, and LVL. The first of them came in the early 1990s, when C&S Specialty Builders Supply, Harrisburg, Oregon, imported regulated bales of hemp to develop its own MDF, with an assist from researchers at Washington State University Wood CONTINUED ON PAGE 20 ›

SURFACE & PANEL • Q2 2022

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