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Leaching of flakeboard produced from recycled CCA-treated wood into deionized water

Informally Refereed

Abstract

The disposal of preservative-treated wood is becoming a larger issue for the forest products industry due to increasing public concern and scrutiny as well as costs associated with traditional disposal, i.e., landfilling. Recycling of preservative-treated wood has great potential. In this study, flakeboard was produced from decommissioned guardrail posts that had been treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA). The leaching characteristics of chromium, copper, and arsenic from flakeboards manufactured from five different ratios of recycled CCA-treated wood and untreated virgin southern pine wood were investigated. Five ratios of recycled CCA-treated wood and virgin, untreated wood were used for flakeboard furnish. The ratios were 100:0, 75:25, 50:50, 25:75, and 0:100. The guardrails generally showed higher amounts of CCA in the outer horizontal areas and the middle vertical regions of the guardrail posts. As expected, the furnishes with greater amounts of CCA-treated wood had higher leaching values.

Citation

Li, W.; Shupe, T.F.; Hse, Chung-Yun. 2004. Leaching of flakeboard produced from recycled CCA-treated wood into deionized water. Forest Products Journal 54(3):38-41
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/8186