OPTIMUM STEAM PRETREATING TECHNIQUE OF CHIPS FOR MANUFACTURING OF PARTICLEBOARDS

Highly dimensionally stable wood based particleboards were produced by pretreated chips with saturated steam at elevated pressures. In this work, the wood chips ofbirch (B. Platyphylla) were used and determination of optimum steam pressure and steam pretreating time were formulated as a constrained non-linear programming problem. The results showed that the optimum technique parameters for steam pretreating birch chips were about 1.275 MPa in steam pressure and 6 min. in steam pretreating time.