Investigation of Formaldehyde Emission from Light-Weighted Multi-Structure Wood Products with Polystyrene Granule Download PDF

Lightweight composite wood products are ones whose demand is increasingly grow year by year. Accordingly it is predicted that it has the highest rate of growth in above mentioned industry during upcoming decades. This issue is becoming more important due to shortage of wood resource, competition to provide this renewable materials, and finally economical components in production of lightweight products. Polystyrene is less expensive and very light product (with density of 30 kg/m3). Use of this material in wood industry is continuously growing to produce competitive products. Synthetic resin containing formaldehyde is used in the production of wood composite products. Formaldehyde that is toxic composition and high carcinogenicity is always regarded as human and environmental concerns in the application of these products. This study aims to investigate the rate of formaldehyde release by polystyrene granules based on the main processing components of producing three-layer particleboard. In this test, 8 treatments with three replications were defined from the ratio of polystyrene to wood (two levels); the percentage of adhesive (two levels); the mixing of the surface layer and middle layer (two levels). The density of produced woods is chosen 0.5 gr/cm3. The press components were considered constant for comparability (temperature: 160° C, pressure: 30 kg / cm2, time: 6 min). After production, boards are calibrated according to the standard of ISO 12642-4 in condition of acclimatization and are tested to determine rate of formaldehyde release in drying method. The most optimum treatments are selected based on ANOVA analysis.