4. Technologies under development for future applications

4.1 Wood adhesives

As far as wood adhesives are concerned, a number of avenues for experimental improvement have been explored, dictated by the need to mitigate their environmental impact. Firstly, the relative scarcity of tannins produced worldwide, compared with the tonnage of synthetic adhesives used in the panel industry, has prompted a great deal of research into extending the tannin resource to make more tonnage available. As the potential material for tannin extraction shows that millions of tons of this material can be extracted every year worldwide, some companies began building additional extraction plants as early as the 2010s, such as Tannin Corporation, S.A. Ajinomoto OmniChem, W. Ulrich GmbH, Laffort S.A, Silvateam... This movement is still relatively small on a global...