The scarcity of natural resources and the generation of waste without adequate disposal are a worldwide concern related to the linear production model.These characteristics are present in the wood panel production. Faced with this problem, the present study aimed to identify in the literature, circular economy (CE) practices in the waste management of wood panel production processes and the possibilities for implementing new practices that incorporate circularity concepts. A systematic search was conducted to select the most relevant work on the theme. A search was done using the ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and Scopus databases by combining the following keywords: “Circular Economy” (and its possible variations), “Wood-based Panel”, and “Wood Waste”. The results evidenced circular economy practices on waste management already being used by the wood panel industry, besides potential practices to increase circularity. The changes go towards sustainable manufacturing and responsible consumption, which aims to “ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”. Opportunities range from the extraction of raw materials to the disposal of wood panel waste at the end-of-life. The circular economy model is still recent and the process of transitioning is in its initial phase, as well as scientific research on the theme, mainly regarding the wood panel industry. Studies addressing the circular economy and wood panels are not yet widespread, pointing to a gap yet to be explored. The bibliographic review allowed identifying the existence of potential applications of circular economy in the wood panel industry; yet, this piece of research points to a broad field of exploration.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report on a life cycle assessment (LCA)-based ecodesign teaching practice via university-industry collaboration in an industrial engineering undergraduate course. Design/methodology/approach A new course was designed and taught in the Industrial Engineering undergraduate course of a Federal University in Brazil. The course comprised explanatory lectures and a practical project developed in a partnership between the university and an industry partner where students had to develop Ecodesign proposals based on LCA to improve the environmental profile of both solid and reticulated paint brushes. To that end, students used the LCA software tool Umberto NXT v.7.1.13 (educational version), where they modeled the life cycle of four plastic brushes and assessed it using the impact categories of climate change and resource consumption, and the Ecoinvent v.3.3 database. After course completion, students, professors and industry collaborators were asked to provide feedback on the project performance and expectations. Findings The course design used was welcomed by both students and the industry partner. Students found the novel approach intriguing and useful to their future careers. The results also exceeded the industry partner’s expectations, as students formulated valuable insights. Professors observed that learning was made easier, as content was put into practice and internalized more easily and solidly. The approach was found to be a win-win-win. Practical implications Students acquired a fair share of knowledge on sustainability issues and potential existing trade-offs, which is valuable to industrial practices. The industry noticed the valuable contributions that academia can provide. The university profited from providing students with a real case challenging traditional teaching methods. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first case studies to show how LCA and ecodesign teaching practice can support sustainability learning in an industrial engineering undergraduate course.

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Different bleaching reagents have different efficiencies of removing chromophore groups from chemical pulps. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of different bleaching sequences on the removal of chromophore groups, especially carbonyls, which are suspected to cause brightness reversion. The bleaching sequences analyzed comprise the stages: chlorine dioxide, acid hydrolysis at high temperature, alkaline extraction with hydrogen peroxide, pressurized hydrogen peroxide, and hydrogen peroxide. After bleaching an oxygen-delignified eucalypt kraft pulp with these sequences, the pulps were analyzed for their final brightness, brightness reversion, and pulp viscosity; the bleached pulps were also analyzed using ultraviolet resonance Raman spectroscopy in the infrared region. The infrared analysis indicated that bleaching stages that used hydrogen peroxide, such as pressurized hydrogen peroxide or hydrogen peroxide, in the terminal position reduced the amount of carbonyl groups in the bleached pulp as measured by the absorption band intensity. This study observed that the inclusion of a hot acid hydrolysis stage in the bleach sequence improved the final brightness and brightness stability of the bleached eucalyptus pulp. The replacement of a chlorine dioxide brightening stage by a hydrogen peroxide stage at the end of a bleach sequence yielded higher pulp brightness, and less brightness reversion. The use of pressurized hydrogen peroxide with oxygen resulted in less brightness reversion.

The production of bioethanol from materials of renewable origin is an important matter for a more sustainable economic development, and at the same time it challenges researchers to seek more efficient technologies that can make it viable. Wood is a profitable and advantageous option, with special emphasis on eucalyptus, whose cultivation has high turnover in Brazil, where land is available for this purpose. Therefore, the goal of this research was to optimize the hydrolysis stage using acid instead of enzymes for the conversion of chips of Eucalyptus urograndis into bioethanol, with additional co-production of furfural and commercial lignin, in order to make the process more advantageous. To obtain bioethanol, a pre-treatment adapted from autohydrolysis was performed to remove the hemicelluloses, followed by soda pulping to remove the lignin and, finally, the acid hydrolysis of the β-(1→4) glycosidic bonds between the C1–C4 cellulose carbons releasing β-D-glucose monomers to be fermented into bioethanol. In the acid hydrolysis step, sulfuric acid of concentration 1127 gL−1 was used. After the experimental analyses performed, it could be observed that in acid hydrolysis, treatments using 70 mL and 80 mL of sulfuric acid did not differ statistically in relation to glucose production. However, by increasing the volume of acid to 90 mL, there was an increase in the production of fermentable sugars into bioethanol, 63.7 %, which began decreasing when adding acid above 93 mL, because the excess of acid also caused the degradation of sugars into 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF); and in the treatment of 100 mL there was a higher production of HMF. The production of bioethanol proved to be competitive after the fermentation of the sample from the 90 mL treatment with a production of 103.7 L of bioethanol/ton of wood, in addition to being beneficial to the process as a whole with the co-production of furfural, 28.8 kg of furfural ton−1 of wood, and commercial lignin, 428.3 kg of lignin per ton of wood, precursors to various chemicals such as resins, coatings and inks.

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