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Environmental Impact of Wood Modification

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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

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en

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15

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Coatings, Volume 11, issue 3

Abstract

The modification of wood involves extra processing over and above what is associated with un-modified material and this will involve an associated environmental impact. There is now a body of information on this due to the presence in the public domain of a number of environmental product declarations (EPDs). Using these data, it is possible to determine what the extra impact associated with the modification is. The process of modification results in a life extension of the product, which has implications regarding the storage of sequestered atmospheric carbon in the harvested wood products (HWP) materials' pool and also extended maintenance cycles (e.g., longer periods between applying coatings). Furthermore, the life extension benefits imparted by wood modification need to be compared with the use of other technologies, such as conventional wood preservatives. This paper analysed the published data from a number of sources (peer-reviewed literature, published EPDs, databases) to compare the impacts associated with different modification technologies. The effect of life extension was examined by modelling the carbon flow dynamics of the HWP pool and determining the effect of different life extension scenarios. Finally, the paper examined the impact of different coating periods, and the extensions thereof, imparted by the use of different modified wood substrates.

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Callum Hill wishes to thank Abodo Wood Ltd. for funding part of this study. Part of the work reported in this paper was carried out under the CircWood (Increasing the climate change mitigation potential of wood used in construction) project supported by the Growth and Development from Wood Program of the Finnish Ministry of the Environment under grant decision number VN/5272/2018. Mark Hughes and Callum Hill gratefully acknowledge financial support from this source.

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Hill, C, Hughes, M & Gudsell, D 2021, 'Environmental Impact of Wood Modification', Coatings, vol. 11, no. 3, 366. https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings11030366

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