A facile strategy to fabricate low viscosity and high cold tack soy protein-based adhesive for particleboard production

The utilization of soy protein as a wood adhesive has been successfully implemented in the industrial production of plywood. However, it is still a significant challenge to directly utilize soy protein-based adhesive for the fabrication of particleboard owing to its high viscosity and low cold tack. In this study, polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) emulsion was used to modify soy protein-based adhesive to reduce its viscosity and enhance its cold tack. By incorporating a content of 30% PVAc emulsion, the viscosity of the adhesive was reduced to 880 mPa·s, which was much lower than the pure soy protein-based adhesive value. Simultaneously, the cold tack was significantly increased by nearly 500 times after the addition of PVAc. The obtained adhesives met the requirements for particleboard production. In addition, the internal bonding strength of the produced particleboard reached 0.7 MPa, significantly exceeding the requirements for P6-grade particleboards (≥ 0.40 MPa, GB/T4897–2015). Moreover, it exhibited no formaldehyde emissions, making it a high-quality particleboard suitable for furniture applications. This study successfully presents a soy protein-based adhesive suitable for particleboard production using a simple blending modification approach, thereby expanding the application scope of soy protein-based adhesives.