Table 1.
Wood Building Materials for Formaldehyde Emission Tests of This Research.
Fig 1.
The 4 standard test methods of the Chinese national standard GB 18580 for product formaldehyde emissions.
(a) The perforator extraction method. (b) The 9–11 L desiccator method. (c) The environmental chamber method. (d) The 40 L desiccator method (Posture A, the 450 cm2 emission surface of the specimen faced the distilled water at the bottom of the desiccator for sampling). (e) The 40 L desiccator method (Posture B, the 450 cm2 emission surface of the specimen faced the distilled water with 45°). (f) The 40 L desiccator method (Posture C, the sealed surface of the specimen faced the distilled water). About the consideration of the 3 situations for the 40 L desiccator method, see the corresponding results and discussion for the 40 L desiccator method.
Table 2.
Characterization of the Product Formaldehyde Emission: The Perforator Extraction Methods in Popular Standards and Chinese GB 18580.
Table 3.
Characterization of the Product Formaldehyde Emission: The Desiccator Methods in Popular Standards and Chinese GB 18580.
Table 4.
Characterization of the Product Formaldehyde Emission: The Environmental Chamber Methods in Popular Standards and Chinese GB 18580.
Fig 2.
Formaldehyde emission values (perforator value) of various materials characterized by the perforator extraction method of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
MDF, medium density fiberboard; PB, particleboard; BB, blockboard; LF, laminate flooring; PQ, parquet.
Fig 3.
Formaldehyde emission values (9–11 L desiccator value) of various materials characterized by the 9–11 L desiccator method of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
MDF, medium density fiberboard; PB, particleboard; BB, blockboard; LF, laminate flooring; PQ, parquet.
Fig 4.
Formaldehyde emission values (40 L desiccator value) of various materials characterized by the 40 L desiccator method of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
MDF, medium density fiberboard; PB, particleboard; BB, blockboard; LF, laminate flooring; PQ, parquet.
Fig 5.
Formaldehyde emission values (40 L desiccator value) of various materials characterized by the 40 L desiccator method (under 3 situations of the specimen placement) of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
MDF, medium density fiberboard; PB, particleboard; BB, blockboard; LF, laminate flooring; PQ, parquet. Posture A, the 450 cm2 emission surface of the specimen faced the distilled water at the bottom of the desiccator for sampling; Posture B, the 450 cm2 emission surface of the specimen faced the distilled water with 45°; Posture C, the sealed surface of the specimen faced the distilled water. The coefficient of variation for each material (of the 5 materials) was caused by the formaldehyde emission values derived from the 3 situations of the specimen placement.
Fig 6.
Formaldehyde emission values (chamber value) of various materials characterized by the environmental chamber method of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
MDF, medium density fiberboard; PB, particleboard; BB, blockboard; LF, laminate flooring; PQ, parquet.
Fig 7.
Formaldehyde emission concentrations in the chamber air (chamber concentrations Ca) vs. the test time (or elapsed time t) of various materials characterized by the environmental chamber method of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
MDF: medium density fiberboard, PB: particleboard, BB: blockboard, LF: laminate flooring, PQ: parquet.
Fig 8.
Statistical distributions of formaldehyde emission values (perforator value, derived from multiple tests) of various materials characterized by the perforator extraction method of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
(a) MDF, medium density fiberboard. (b) PB, particleboard. (c) BB, blockboard. (d) LF, laminate flooring. (e) PQ, parquet. The frequency denoted the number of data occurred at corresponding formaldehyde emission levels. These data were fitted by the probability density function of a Gaussian distribution.
Fig 9.
Statistical distributions of formaldehyde emission values (9–11 L desiccator value, derived from multiple tests) of various materials characterized by the 9–11 L desiccator method of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
(a) MDF, medium density fiberboard. (b) PB, particleboard. (c) BB, blockboard. (d) LF, laminate flooring. (e) PQ, parquet. The frequency denoted the number of data occurred at corresponding emission formaldehyde levels. These data were fitted by the probability density function of a Gaussian distribution.
Fig 10.
Statistical distributions of formaldehyde emission values (40 L desiccator value, derived from multiple tests) of various materials characterized by the 40 L desiccator method of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
(a) MDF, medium density fiberboard. (b) PB, particleboard. (c) BB, blockboard. (d) LF, laminate flooring. (e) PQ, parquet. The frequency denoted the number of data occurred at corresponding formaldehyde emission levels. These data were fitted by the probability density function of a Gaussian distribution.
Fig 11.
Statistical distributions of formaldehyde emission data (chamber Cv, derived from multiple tests) of various materials characterized by the environmental chamber method of Chinese national standard GB 18580.
Chamber Cv, the coefficient of variation for each formaldehyde emission concentration during the environmental chamber test caused by the duplicate sampling. (a) MDF, medium density fiberboard. (b) PB, particleboard. (c) BB, blockboard. (d) LF, laminate flooring. (e) PQ, parquet. The frequency denoted the number of data occurred at corresponding chamber Cv levels. These data were fitted by the probability density function of a log-normal distribution.
Fig 12.
A large scale simulation survey for formaldehyde emissions of various materials in standard tests of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
(a) The random variable pi values (i = 1 to 60,000) subject to the Student’s t-distribution generated by the computer. (b) An illustrative example of the large scale simulation survey, i.e., the simulated μi values (i = 1 to 60,000) of the 40 L desiccator test for the medium density fiberboard (MDF), in which the μi values (i = 1 to 60,000) represented the formaldehyde emission value characterized by the 40 L desiccator method.
Fig 13.
The measurement uncertainty for formaldehyde emission data of various materials characterized by test methods of the Chinese national standard GB 18580, which is evaluated by the Monte Carlo method.
(a) The simulation times N of the large scale simulation survey = 600. (b) The simulation times N of the large scale simulation survey = 6,000. (c) The simulation times N of the large scale simulation survey = 60,000. MDF, medium density fiberboard; PB, particleboard; BB, blockboard; LF, laminate flooring; PQ, parquet. Perforator, the perforator extraction method; 9–11 L, the 9–11 L desiccator method; 40 L, the 40 L desiccator method; Chamber, the environmental chamber method. The “uncertainty” denoted the measurement uncertainty for a material-method combination (of the 20 combinations = 5 materials × 4 methods), while the “average uncertainty” represented the measurement uncertainty for a method (of the 4 methods), which was the arithmetic mean of the 5 “uncertainties” for the the 5 materials studied by this method.
Table 5.
Reported Data Correlations for Product Formaldehyde Emissions between Some Standard Test Methods of Developed Countries and Regions.
Fig 14.
Empirical correlations for formaldehyde emission values of various materials characterized by different test methods of the Chinese national standard GB 18580.
Perforator, the results of the perforator extraction method; 9–11 L, the results of the 9–11 L desiccator method; 40 L, the results of the 40 L desiccator method; Chamber, the results of the environmental chamber method. LF, laminate flooring. Considering that data of the laminate flooring occasionally served as an outlier, when the correlation was obviously affected by this problem, data of the laminate flooring would be marked as “LF” in corresponding Figs. When data of the laminate flooring were marked as “Removed”, in corresponding Figs, they would not be considered when modeling.