The influence of scavengers on VOC emissions in particleboards made from pine and poplar

Abstract

This paper studies the performance of scavengers on Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions from wood-based composites. Particleboards made from maritime pine (Pinus Pinaster Ait.) and European poplar (Populus spp.) were produced with a UF resin doped with melamine and two scavengers, sodium metabisulfite and urea. VOC emission was measured according to EN ISO 16000. Particleboards made from pine present much higher total VOC (TVOC) emissions than boards made from poplar. Pine emits a higher amount of terpenes, but also aldehydes, acids and terpenoids, while poplar emits mainly acetic acid. Sodium metabisulfite showed an excellent ability to reduce aldehydes emission, which represents nearly 50 % of total emission of particleboards made from pine. When sodium metabisulfite was applied to particleboards made from poplar, reduction of TVOCs was not significant due to the low contribution of aldehydes to TVOCs. Urea presents a low reduction in TVOCs for both wood species.2

Qualitative Differences and Emission Persistence of Volatile Organic Compounds from Bio-Based Particleboards

“…For example, the higher contents of xylan and formic acid in the WS sample after SE could result in a higher concentration of furfural during the overlaying process. To some extent, a similar tendency was reported by adding scavengers to the particleboards from different raw materials (pine and poplar), concluding the highest VOC emissions (particularly acids) for pine-based boards, indicating the differences in raw materials producing different VOCs [ 28 ].…”

“…For example, overlaying by a phenolic paper of MDF reduced formaldehyde and total VOC emissions by 99% and 88%, respectively, while epoxy powder coatings of the same fiberboard resulted in a similar effect on the reduction of formaldehyde and even better reduction (94%) of VOCs [ 34 ]. Sodium metabisulphite was demonstrated as an excellent aldehyde scavenger capable of substantially reducing total VOCs in particleboards with different lignocellulosics [ 28 ]. Acetic acid was substantially reduced in parquet products by a solvent-based coating system (PU-1) [ 5 ].…”

Effects of the manufacturing conditions on the VOCs emissions of particleboard

“…The terpenes were derived from wood elements, especially pine (Baumann et al 1999(Baumann et al , 2000; thus, the increasing terpene content was due to the addition of wood particles. Regarding aldehydes, these compounds are the main components of particleboard (Baumann et al 1999;Hodgson et al 2002;Costa et al 2014). Hexanal, benzaldehyde, and nonanal were detected in all of the boards.…”