With strong demand for formaldehyde-free and bio-based wood adhesives, soy flour with crosslinking agent now dominates the North American interior plywood market. It has not expanded to other, larger wood bonding markets because attaining the required strength is cost prohibitive. Here we discuss how different denaturation treatments applied to soy proteins result in wood bonds with widely varying wet strength.<br/>There is a common statement in soy adhesive literature that denatured proteins have higher wet strength because denaturation exposes groups for reaction with the crosslinking agent. Our data on a range of denatured soy proteins shows no correlation between amine reactive groups on the surface (fluorescamine reaction) and wet strength, even when an amine reactive crosslinking agent (polyamidoamine epichlorohydrin, or PAE) was used in the adhesive. The reasons for questioning this often-quoted belief are discussed in further detail, with an emphasis on protein structure and how the structure is modified through (mostly heat-based) processes.

Denaturation to expose protein reactive groups? Not so fast.

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ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.