Particle board
Particle board, also known as particleboard or chipboard, is an engineered wood product, belonging to the wood-based panels, manufactured from wood chips and a synthetic, mostly formaldehyde-based resin or other suitable binder, which is pressed under a hot press, batch- or continuous- type, and produced.
Particle board is cheaper, denser, and more uniform than conventional wood and plywood and is substituted for them when cost is more important than strength and appearance.
A significant disadvantage of particleboard is its susceptibility to expansion and discoloration from moisture absorption, particularly when it is not covered with paint or another sealer.
Therefore, it is rarely used outdoors or in places where there are high levels of moisture, except in bathrooms, kitchens and laundries, where it is commonly used as an underlayment shielded beneath a moisture-resistant continuous sheet of vinyl flooring.
[5] This particleboard could be produced with waste products such as planer shavings, off-cuts, or sawdust, hammer-milled into chips and bound together with a phenolic resin.
Particleboard or chipboard is manufactured by mixing particles or flakes of wood or jute-stick together with a resin and forming the mixture into a sheet.
After the particles pass through a mist of resin sufficient to coat all surfaces, they are layered into a continuous "carpet".
In graded-density particleboard, the flakes are spread by an air jet that throws finer particles further than coarse ones.
In the early 1950s, particle-board kitchens started to come into use in furniture construction but, in many cases, it remained more expensive than solid wood.
In 1984, concerns about the high indoor levels of formaldehyde in new manufactured homes led the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development to set construction standards.
Particleboard (PB), medium-density fibreboard (MDF), oriented strand board (OSB), and laminated flooring have been major sources of formaldehyde emissions.
In response to consumer and woodworker pressure on the industry, PB and MDF became available in "no added formaldehyde" (NAF) versions, but were not in common use as of 2015[update].
Many other building materials such as furniture finish, carpeting, and caulking give off formaldehyde, as well as urea-formaldehyde foam insulation, which is banned in Canada for installation in a residential closed-cavity wall.
