Can you ever imagine seating on jute sticks in a well-furnished office room? Or isn’t it odd to secure your home with a door that is made of wood dust only? If you are familiar with particleboard technology, then you already know that these strange things are possible. The chair, you are sitting on right now, or the desk, you are keeping your laptop on to read this article, there is a high probability that these are made of particleboard. Not only this, just look around, most likely the interior design of your room is also done with particleboard. It is comparatively cheaper than wooden goods, whereas the outlook, design flexibility, and longevity are highly lucrative to the consumers. Thus, it has become a vital part of modern days furniture and interior design industries.
Particleboard was invented first in Germany at around the end of the 19th century. However, its commercial production started only after the second world war, once again in Germany. Bangladesh was not lagging much behind and caught up with this trend since Star Particle Board Mills (Partex Star Group) introduced this in 1962. Utilizing the discovery of Dr. Qudrat-i-Khuda, a prominent Bangladeshi chemist, they used the by-product of the largely cultivated golden fiber, jute stick, to produce their particleboards. Later numerous big companies, namely Akij, T.K., Bengal, Woodland, Super, Otobi, and so on, followed this trend to develop a market, which is worth more than 3 thousand crore taka now with more than 15 percent growth every year since 2017. 15 thousand people are directly earning their livelihood from this industry.
Particleboard is an engineered product, made from wood chips or wood dust. Also known as artificial wood, this is often said to be environment-friendly since it utilizes unused wooden pieces or jute sticks for its production. Softwood and jute sticks, in their natural form, cannot be used in furniture or interior product manufacturing. But, the concept of composite material changed this scenario. When the chips or flakes of these softwoods or jute sticks are mixed with resin (glue), and then pressed at a high temperature and pressure, the strength of the final product (particleboard) can be comparable to the strength of any natural hardwood.
3-layer particleboard is the most common type of board in the market. Smooth-rough-smooth is the three layers of the board. It is kind of a sandwich. This formation is necessary to make the mechanical bonding sufficiently strong. When chips are made from wood or jute sticks, there are two types of chips, one is very tiny, and another is comparatively larger. These tiny chips are kept on both surfaces of the particleboard whereas the large chips are placed at the core. You can visually see the difference between these three layers if you look at the cross-section of a particleboard.
Tiny chips (fine chips) make the surface smooth, and large chips make the core strong. Besides surface soundness, screw-holding strength, bending strength, and tensile strength are some of the important mechanical parameters, which need to be considered while testing the quality of particleboard. Another important thing is the moisture content. Moisture can be considered the major enemy of particleboard. It causes swelling, internal cracks, and overall damage to the board.
The surfaces of particleboard can be covered with wood veneer and laminates (a thin slice of chemically processed natural wood or synthetic sheet) to produce veneered and laminated boards. This is done for visual beautification with a colorful sheet covering, surface smoothness, and increasing mechanical strength. Most of the furniture and home decoration is done with veneered or laminated particleboard nowadays.
In the production process of particleboard, there are two types of raw materials, one is the base material, and another is bonding material, or adhesive. Wood chips or jute stick chips are the base materials whereas resin is the bonding chemical. Though, the use of urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin raised questions due to its hazardous nature among the scientific community in the 1990s, till now it is being used in the manufacturing process for its availability and low cost. Urea-formaldehyde resin causes formaldehyde emissions from the particle board which can irritate the respiratory tracts, skin, and mucous membranes, cause headaches, trigger allergies, and may even cause cancer.
Because of this carcinogenic nature, there are several international particleboard manufacturing standards like European standards, British standards, and so on to set the safe emission level of the resins. According to these standards, there are E0, E1, E2, and E3 types of board (these are emission grades) in which E0 grade is considered for zero-emission and E3 grade is considered for the maximum emission. In Europe, only products with emission classes E0 or E1 are allowed to be sold in the market.
- E0 – evaporation is not higher than the natural wood
- E1 – evaporates a maximum of 0.1 ppm (parts per million)
- E2 – up to 1 ppm
- E3 – up to 2.3 ppm
In absence of any emission standard set by the Bangladesh government, the products here are mostly found to E2 and E3 standards. Hence, consumers need to be conscious about the selection of a health-friendly particleboard. The consumers shall always check for the emission class of the product. Despite not being an expert, any person can feel the existence of the emission from the board through eye irritation and pickle-like intense odor even from a distance.
The world is now searching for eco-friendly sustainable products everywhere. Particleboard, especially made from jute sticks, is a great contributor in this respect, through a massive reduction of deforestation and thus contributing to the environmental sustainability and the country’s economy by bringing back the golden days of jute cultivation. In addition, Bangladesh is also emerging as a particle board exporting nation with an export value of 8 lac and 88 thousand US dollars in the year 2020, as per the information obtained from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC). With the achievement of better emission grades and quality standards, American and European markets may also open for our exporters. Finally, the government also shall step forward to develop a manufacturing and emission standard for ensuring public health and also develop a new export sector.
Md. Tanvir Siraj is a mechanical and industrial production engineer as well as a researcher
