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<p class="1Body">Medium density fiberboards (MDF) are produced mainly by urea-formaldehyde resins (UF) as binding agent, which are synthesized from finite fossil resources. Those boards may emit critical amounts of formaldehyde, which can influence the health of humans and animals. In recent times the wood panel board industry is looking for alternative glues which contain less or no formaldehyde. In order to avoid potential formaldehyde emissions altogether it would be preferable not to use binders which are formaldehyde based at all. One possibility is to use natural binders or to activate the wood fibers’ own binding forces by applying Laccase-Mediator-Systems (LMS). As a support of the LMS interactions with wood fibers technical lignin can be added. In this study it was found out that the addition of technical lignin intensified the fiber to fiber bindings. Two Lignin-Laccase-Mediator-Systems (LLMS) were analysed by Gel-Permeation-Chromatography and Cyclic voltammetry. Later the LLMSs were tested in the pilot scale production of MDF. The determination of the physical technological properties revealed that the LLMS treated MDF have higher dimension stabilities than only LMS treated MDF and approximately the same thickness swelling after 24 h. The results indicate that the application of LLMSs have a high potential for natural bonded MDF.</p>

The further increase of practically usable specific energies in lithium ion batteries (LIBs) can be realized by minimizing the specific capacity losses, e.g., via electrolyte additives. However, the interpretation of research results of additive effects on the performance is challenging, because even for identical materials and conditions different effects on performance are observed, rendering the validity, evaluation, and comparison of electrolyte additives difficult. In this work, we show that such ambiguity can be significantly influenced by the quality of the used benchmark system, i.e., the cell/electrolyte system without additive. The additive effects are low when the used benchmark system performs well. Vice versa, in poor performing cell/electrolyte systems, the effect of the same additive appears strong. Hidden and inconspicuous cell parameters, e.g., the type of graphite electrode preparation prior to cell assembly (e.g., calendered vs hand-pressed graphite electrodes), can significantly affect the performance of the benchmark system and, thus, in turn the resulting additive effect. It is shown that calendered graphite electrodes reveal a better performance in the LIB cell than hand-pressed graphites but have a lower relative additive effect (i.e., lower capacity increase), while absolute performance and practical relevance of the data is better. Overall, for a valid and systematic additive research the use of an application-oriented and, thus, optimized benchmark system is recommended.