Near infrared spectroscopy to evaluate composition of agro-based particleboards

Abstract

Particleboards can be manufactured from particles of any lignin-cellulosic material that can be combined with an adhesive and consolidated under the action of temperature and pressure. Because the raw materials in the industrial process are continually changing, the particleboard industry requires methods for monitoring the quality of their products. Hence, the aim of this paper was to evaluate the composition of the agro-based particleboards by near infrared spectroscopy. In this study, agro-based particleboards produced with different compositions of Eucalyptus and Pinus wood particles and sugar cane bagasse were evaluated by NIR spectroscopy and partial least square (PLS) regression. The PLS models to estimate the Eucalyptus and Pinus particles and sugar cane bagasse contents presented a strong coefficient of determination (0.90, 0.88 and 0.84, respectively), but also high magnitudes of standard errors of cross-validation were observed (ranging from 8.84 to 11.27%). Development work would be required in order to reduce the standard errors and improve predictive model performance to build robust models that could be applied as quality control tool.