• Journal of the Korea Furniture Society
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2015

In order to prevent decay, distortion, bending, twist on wood products such as wooden furnitures, variety of coating materials were developed and used so far. The coating materials for wood finishing can be synthesized by natural resource or petroleum. However, these coating materials can cause contamination of indoor air quality due to emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In this study, commercialized coating materials for wood finishing such as varnish, coat, and stain were evaluated on emission characteristics of VOCs. Among the varnish, eco-friendly products had about 15~46% lower TVOC emission ($1,042{\mu}g/m^2h{\sim}3,257{\mu}g/m^2h$, respectively, than typical product ($7,100{\mu}g/m^2h$). Natural resource based coating material showed lowest TVOC emission level. However, one of natural resource based waterborne stain showed higher TVOC emission level because waterborne stain already contained higher amount of natural VOC. Oil-based stain might not be suitable for indoor use on interior wall and furniture due to exceed amount of TVOC. Based on results, natural resource based coat or waterborne stain are recommenced to use on wood products.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.297-302
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• 2015

With the intention to solve environmental problems caused by synthetic plastics from petroleum resources, biodegradable polyurethane foams and thermosetting moldings were prepared from biomass, such as wood and wheat bran by liquefaction method. Biodegradability of these biomass-based polymeric materials was investigated. In activated sludge, polyurethane foams from liquefied wheat bran and thermosetting molding from phenolated wood were decomposed approximately 14% and 29% for 20 days, respectively. One of the wood fungi, Coriolus versicolor was able to grow without supplemental nutrition, only with distilled water and polyurethane foam as a nutrition source. Risk assessments were also conducted and results showed that estrogenicity, mutagenicity, and carcinogenicity were not observed in the extractives of biomass- based polymeric materials.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.852-863
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• 2016

Wood-plastic composite (WPC) is a promising and sustainable material, and refers to a combination of wood and plastic along with some binding (adhesive) materials. In comparison to pure wood material, WPCs are in general have advantages of being cost effective, high durability, moisture resistance, and microbial resistance. The properties of WPCs come directly from the concentration of different components in composite; such as wood flour concentration directly affect mechanical and physical properties of WPCs. In this study, wood powder concentration in WPC was determined by Fourier transform near-infrared (FT-NIR) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The reflectance spectra from WPC in both powdered and tableted form with five different concentrations of wood powder were collected and preprocessed to remove noise caused by several factors. To correlate the collected spectra with wood powder concentration, multivariate calibration method of partial least squares (PLS) was applied. During validation with an independent set of samples, good correlations with reference values were demonstrated for both FT-NIR and FT-IR data sets. In addition, high coefficient of determination (${R^2}_p$) and lower standard error of prediction (SEP) was yielded for tableted WPC than powdered WPC. The combination of FT-NIR and FT-IR spectral region was also studied. The results presented here showed that the use of both zones improved the determination accuracy for powdered WPC; however, no improvement in prediction result was achieved for tableted WPCs. The results obtained suggest that these spectroscopic techniques are a useful tool for fast and nondestructive determination of wood concentration in WPCs and have potential to replace conventional methods.

• Journal of the Korea Furniture Society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.207-212
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• 2014

With increased interests in environmental issues, people are looking for new materials that serve special and bio-activated functions. One of interesting materials is charcoal which has excellent adsorption ability for harmful volatile organic compounds, fireproof performance, far-infrared ray emission, and electromagnetic shielding. Since non-crack carbonized board was developed from wood-based composite materials, carbonization method might be applied to woodcraft products such as wood cup and bamboo. In this study, manufacture of wood charcoal bowl was conducted with carbonization method developed in 2009 in order to activate wood products market. Ash tree(Fraxinus rhynchophylla) cup was carbonized at $600^{\circ}C$ with two pretreatments which were phenol resin and wood tar solution treatment. After carbonization of ash tree cup, non-crack charcoal cup were successfully manufactured. Phenol resin treatment affected on charcoal cup manufacturing both positively and negatively. For a positive way, it prevented shrinkage. For a negative way, it decreased water repellency. On the contrary, wood tar treatment accelerated shrinkage a bit and increased water repellency. Based on the results, wood tar can be used as pre-treatment solution for reducing post-treatment costs. We confirmed woodcraft products can be carbonized without deformation, so carbonization may provide a high value-added products from wood.

• Journal of the Korea Furniture Society
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.219-229
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• 2011

Sick building syndrome symptoms that are experienced by building occupants may be caused by toxic substances such as formaldehyde and VOCs, which are known to be emitted from building materials and wood composite products such as wood-based panel, furniture, engineered flooring and construction adhesive. In Korea, the use of wood composite products for indoor environments has increased over the last decade. Recently, wood composite products have been installed in approximately 95% of newly constructed residential buildings. The use of these products has resulted in problems related to human health, and consequently a realization about the importance of indoor air quality. In addition, consumer demand is increasing for natural materials because conventional building materials and wood composite products are made by adding urea-formaldehyde resin or they contain formaldehyde-based resin. More recently, many efforts have been made to reduce formaldehyde emission from building materials that laid in the indoor environment. Especially, if conventional formaldehyde-based adhesives are replaced with green adhesives for residential spaces, it is possible to reduce most of the emission amounts of formaldehyde in indoor environments. In line with this expectation, many researches are being conducted using natural materials such as tannin and cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL). This study discussed the affects and possibilities of green adhesives to reduce formaldehyde emission in indoor environments.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.18-25
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• 2002

Research to discuss the fire performance of materials requires tools for measuring their burning characteristics and validated fire growth models to predict fire behavior of the materials under specific tire scenarios using the measured properties as input for the models. In this study, burning characteristics such as time to ignition, weight loss rate, flame spread, heat release rate, total heat evolved, and effective heat of combustion for four types of wood-based materials were evaluated using the cone calorimeter and inclined panel tests. Time to ignition was affected by not only surface condition and specific gravity of the tested materials but also the type and magnitude of heat source. Results of weight loss rate, measured by inclined panel tests, indicated that heat transfer from the contacted flame used as the heat source into the inner part of the specimen was inversely proportional to specific gravity of material. Flame spread was closely related with ignition time at the near part of burning zone. Under constant and severe external heat flux, there was little difference in weight loss rate and total heat evolved between four types of wood-based panels. More applied heat flux caused by longer ignition time induced a higher first peak value of heat release rate. Burning characteristics data measured in this study can be used effectively as input for fire growth models to predict the fire behavior of materials under specific fire scenarios.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.600-606
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• 2016

Wood-based composite panels such as plywood, particleboard (PB), or medium density fiberboard (MDF) are mostly used in the lamination on their surface for the manufacturing of furniture, or interior building products, the concern on the formaldehyde emission (FE) from the surface laminated wood panels is increasingly attracting attentions from the public. Thus, this study was conducted to understand influence of surface laminating materials to the FE from PB and MDF with or without edge sealing, using 24-hour desiccator method. Both PB samples that had been laminated on their surface with low-pressure laminate (LPL) or polypropylene (PP) film and MDF that had been treated with poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) or coating were tested for the FE with or without edge sealing. As expected, the FE of PB with the sealed edges decreased to 37.4% and 80.7% with the LPL and PP lamination, respectively. The surface laminated MDF with the sealed edges also showed a decrease in the emission up to 57.8% and 54.3%, with the PVC lamination and coating, respectively. However, the coated MDF samples showed 5.3% increase in the emission when their edges were not sealed, indicating a FE form the solvent used for coating. These results showed that the type of surface lamination materials on wood-based composite panels has a great impact on their resultant FE, indicating that the influence of surface laminating materials should be taken into consideration for the formaldehyde mission measurement.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.735-747
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• 2018

Radon radiation exposures in home have been posed as a potential cancer hazard. This research aims to present the basic data of the indoor radon concentration level by examining the radon exhalation rates of wood species. Radon exhalation rates from five commonly used wood species in Korean wood building construction were measured with Continuous Radon Monitor (CRM), Model 1028 (Sun Nuclear Co., USA) using the Closed Chamber Method (CCM). The mass exhalation rate was observed to vary from $0.00089Bq{\cdot}kg^{-1}{\cdot}h^{-1}$ to $0.00181Bq{\cdot}kg^{-1}{\cdot}h^{-1}$, whereas the surface exhalation rate was observed to be $0.00677-0.01517Bq{\cdot}m^{-2}{\cdot}h^{-1}$. The radon exhalation rate of Quercus accutissima Carruth (white oak) which has the highest density showed the highest figure among the five wood species, on the other hand, the rest of four species showed similar results which were similar to the radon exhalation rates of wood in the U.S.A. and Canada. The average of the concentration measured by the CCM represented well up to the second half-life period (7.7 days). Because result of these small quantities seems to indicate that radon exhalation from the tested wood species has almost negligible impact, the main culprit of the high indoor radon concentration is clearly derived from the background of surrounding wood house. Therefore, as a safety precaution, infrastructures made of wood materials should be designed with the consideration of influx of radon and built accordingly. Furthermore, it is highly desirable that wood will be needed to use for furniture and interior finishing material in indoor environment.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.3-6
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• 1991

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.24-37
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• 2007

The Korean Ministry of Environment started controlling indoor air quality (IAQ) in 2004 through the introduction of a law regulating the use of pollutant emitting building materials. The use of materials with formaldehyde emission levels above $1.25 mg/m^2{\cdot}h$ (JIS A 1901, small chamber method) has been prohibited. This level is equivalent to the $E_2$ grade ($>5.0mg/{\ell}$) of the desiccator method (JIS A 1460). However, the $20{\ell}$ small chamber method requires a 7-day test time to obtain the formaldehyde and volatile organic compound (VOC) emission results from solid building interior materials. As a approach to significantly reduce the test time, the field and laboratory emission cell (FLEC) has been proposed in Europe with a total test time less than one hour. This paper assesses the reproducibility of testing formaldehyde and TVOC emissions from wood-based composites such as medium density fiberboard (MDF), laminate flooring, and engineered flooring using three methods: desiccator, perforator and FLEC. According to the desiccator and perforator standards, the formaldehyde emission level of each flooring was ${\le}E_1$ grade. The formaldehyde emission of MDF was $3.48 mg/{\ell}$ by the desiccator method and 8.57 g/100 g by the perforator method. To determine the formaldehyde emission, the peak areas of each wood-based composite were calculated from aldehyde chromatograms obtained using the FLEC method. Formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, propionaldehyde, butyraldehyde and benzaldehyde were detected as aldehyde compounds. The experimental results indicated that MDF emitted chloroform, benzene, trichloroethylene, toluene, ethylbenzene, m,p-xy-lene, styrene, and o-xylene. MDF emitted significantly greater amounts of VOCs than the floorings did.