Abstract
Wood and wood composites are desirable and widely used construction materials in North America due totheir appropriate mechanical and thermal insulation performance, and lower cost. However, they are
easily subject to some natural effects such as fungal decay, photodegradation and fire, when exposed to
outdoor environment. For improving wood’s long term performance, applying preservatives, coating and
fire retardants is effective and has been widely accepted by the current market. Since the growing
awareness of environmental influences and human health, some chemicals used for wood protection such
as chromated copper arsenate, creosote and chromic acid have been restricted to varying degrees.
Therefore, it is important to develop sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives for industry
and the end-user. This research applied phytic acid (PA), cardanol and cardanol glycidyl ether (CGE)
respectively on solid wood and studied how the performance against fungi, weathering and fire changed
after treatment. From the results reported, all of these compounds can improve fungal durability, and only
PA can improve fire performance through reducing heat release and facilitating char forming. As for
weathering performance, the unsaturated cardanol and in-situ cardanol glycidyl ether-maleic anhydride
(MA) polymer can reduce the discoloration during the artificial weathering test. Additionally, the use of
another commercial cardanol-based epoxy (CBE) to replace bisphenol-A type epoxy (BAE) in wood
particle composite manufacturing was explored. A series of tests, including fire performance, artificial
weathering, fungal decay, water soaking and three-point bending, were conducted to study the
performance differences. When the substitution of BAE was at 25% and 50%, there were no significant
differences in mechanical, water soaking and anti-fungal performance, and fortunately the fire
performance was improved. These results show that CBE is a promising resin for wood particle based
composites. Finally, the CBE-wood composite was successfully extruded from a single-screw extruder,
proving the feasibility of future 3D printing.