The influence of decorative surface of commercial particleboards on the formaldehyde release measured by flask method

Abstract

The formaldehyde release and the formaldehyde content from the commercial particleboards were determined using the flask and perforator methods. Since the melamine faced boards were used in this research, the flask method was applied to evaluate how much the decorative surface (melamine impregnated paper) affects the test results in terms of reducing the formaldehyde emission from the samples. Hence, the flask method tests were performed simultaneously with one test series presenting the melamine faced samples, and the other one presenting the samples with sanded surface. Also, the decorative surface was sanded off from all of the test samples intended for formaldehyde content measurements using perforator method. During this research, it was found that by removing the decorative surface, the formaldehyde emission increased in the range from 12.6% to 16.6%, suggesting that the decorative surface acts as a barrier to formaldehyde emission even for the samples of such a small size used in the flask method. In addition, very high correlation, of 0,989 and 0,959, was found between the formaldehyde content values (perforator method) and the values of formaldehyde release from sanded and melamine faced samples, respectively.