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 determinat ion of optimum steam pressure and steam pretreating time were formulat ed as a constrained non-linear programming problem. The results showed that the optimum technique parameters for steam pretreating birch chi ps were about 1.275 MPa in steam pressure and 6 min. in steam pretreat ing time.