Little Secrets for the Successful Industrial Use of Tannin Adhesives: A Review

This brief article reviews a very particular and quite narrow field, namely what has been done and what is needed to know for tannin adhesives for wood panels to succeed industrially. The present fashionable focus on bioadhesives has led to producing chemical adhesive formulations and approaches for tannin adhesives as a subject of academic publications. These, as good and original they might be, are and will still remain a rather empty academic exercise if not put to the test of real industrial trials and industrial use. They will remain so without the “little” secrets and techniques outlined here that show that there is a great gap between developing an adhesive formulation in the laboratory and the hard reality to make it work where it does really count, in its industrial application. It outlines the fact that even more modern and excellent, newly developed bioadhesive formulations might well miserably fail once tried in the industry if the problems that always arise in their upgrading are not identified and solved, and solved well. It also outlines the fact that not only must costs always be taken into account and that a practical and possibly easy-to-handle approach must always be used, but too expensive or complex and unyielding adhesive systems are also often shown to be unusable or unsuitable in industry.