#WomenInWoodScience: Raphaela Hellmayr and her STSM experience

Copied from Raphaela’s written testimony:

I am Raphaela Hellmayr, PhD student from Prof. Rupert Wimmer at BOKU, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. My research topic is related to future engineered wood materials according to the cradle to cradle concept. Wood belongs to the biological cycle, but adhesives to the technical cycle, which means the closed loops are difficult to reach. I address the question how these wooden materials can become in line with the circular economy strategy with closed material loops. The main challenge is the adhesive, because as long as the bond line can’t be opened at the end of life, the wood particles will become smaller at each recycling step and adhesives accumulate.

I was very thankful for the collaboration with Prof. Milan Serneks from the University of Ljubljana, where I had the opportunity to work in his lab with ABES for two months during summer. Additionally other methods to characterize the adhesive, e.g., rheology, DSC or IR were applied, and I was very happy to use the available infrastructure in Ljubljana. It was a pleasure to get to know his research group and the university system in Slovenia.

The goal was to test the recycling potential, the pressing parameters, and the mechanical properties of a self-developed lignin starch-based adhesive with an automatic bonding evaluation system (ABES), where adhesives can be tested when gluing veneers. Promising results with comparable mechanical properties to urea formaldehyde could be reached and will be published in a scientific article later this year.

Thank you to Rupert and Milan for supervision during the STSM and special thanks to the Society of Wood Science and Technology for funding!

A short video can be found here.