Corn based Materials
Maize is an annual plant that is widely distributed over the world and approximately 1.5 to 2.5 m tall, and the ear of maize, which may be used as a fruit, has been widely cultivated for the edible plant or the plant for animals.
The functional cornstalk board of the present invention is a cornstalk plywood material maintaining an excellent bending strength and an excellent density, and capable of manufacturing the cornstalk plywood material into various shapes and desired standards of a woodcut, scantling, plywood, construction materials and a slate due to its easy molding by the pressure and the extrusion, and therefore the functional cornstalk board may be environment-friendly, mass-produced and economical since the cornstalk is used as the unlimited resource without adversely affecting the forests so as to obtain woods or plywoods, and particularly it may be light in weight, easily processed in molding and cutting, and also used for application products into which the colors are added.
The cornstalk by-produced in the maize is produced after harvesting the ear of maize, and therefore it was simply wasted as the farmyard manure in the past, or partially used as a domestic animal feed, a food additive material. However, there have been recently many studies in such various fields as in generating the various substitute energy sources such as ethanol, manufacturing the pulp.
The study on the cornstalk has been conducted in the field of construction materials, and partially tested by adding the cornstalk into interior/exterior materials.
However, if the cornstalk is used as the interior/exterior materials, a specific binder should be suitably required for the main component "cornstalk", as well as the final product has no practical use as the board or the interior/exterior materials because the molding method and the molding condition of the cornstalk are complicated owing to its essential characteristics. Accordingly, there has been an attempt to develop the cornstalk as the construction materials since it is slightly employed in spite of the enormous recycling value.
(Ryu, US Patent 7,838,578; 11/23/2010)
Materials
Sustainable Materials
Sustainable Technology
Recent US Patents
11/23/2010
7,838,578
Functional cornstalk board and preparation method thereof
Ryu, South Korea has developed a functional cornstalk board and a preparation method thereof. The functional cornstalk board includes 1 to 10 parts by weight of a curing agent, based on the total weight of the mixture of 6 to 10 parts by weight of cornstalk and 0.2 to 2 parts by weight of a binder or silicate. It is obtained by molding the raw material at a molding temperature of 120 to 210.degree. C. and a molding pressure of 10 to 30,000 kgf/cm.sup.2 for 0.5 to 20 minutes using a semiautomatic or multistage automatic heat press device. (RDC 4/9/2011)