Urea in particleboard
GBA Editor
| Posted in General Questions on
I am a big fan of Joe Lstiburek and just love his speaking and writing style. Several times now, he has referred to the urea in the glue used in particleboard, as being sourced from cow urine??? Is this even possibly true? I am quite familiar with the cattle industry and have never heard of anyone “harvesting” cattle urine. Most or all of the urea that we use as fertilizer in our farming practices is easily and cheaply made from natural gas. Maybe Joe is just pulling our leg a bit to make a good story??
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Replies
Garth,
You're right that Joe is spreading that information.
This quotation comes from Joe's recent article, "The Material View of Mold": "Now we can take the fibers and grind them into sawdust and then compress them together with glues and nitrogen — we get particleboard. Where do we get the nitrogen? From the back end of a cow — urea from cow urine. What do you think the particleboard smells like when it gets wet?"
Any chemists out there care to comment? I'll try to contact Joe to learn the source of his information.
Garth,
Joe just sent me an e-mail. He wrote that he was just "having a little fun. Urea formaldehyde was the first complex organic compound synthesized by man. It is the basis of organic chemistry. ... The 'man-made' stuff is identical to the 'cow-made' stuff — it's just that the cows are not as efficient at making it as man. So the stuff in the glue could come from a cow, but we don't use cows to make it. We don't have enough cows — and they are more important to us to eat and get milk from and to play cowboy with. We herd cows not cats and drink beer."
I would be shocked but pleasantly surprised if that were true. Joe probably should say "where ELSE do we get urea--from cow urine" (and human urine, for that matter). If you add water to urea, it releases ammonia and stinks. If you add water to particleboard, it releases ammonia and stinks.
If farmers find it more cost-effective to fertilize with nitrogen in the form of urea derived from natural gas or coal than to use animal waste, I can't imagine that particleboard manufacturers have found the opposite to be true.
In this paper http://www.ashrae.org/doclib/20070727_buildingsciences.pdf Joe also likens OSB to the food product SPAM and says that old mold with no teeth eat paper. I think he's telling a story.
Martin,
Thanks for tracking this down, and thanks to Joe for clearing this up.
However, dried cow blood is still used to glue plywood veneers, though soy-based alternatives are being tested for "vegan" homes.
What most of us don't know is that cow (and other animal) parts are used in thousands of consumer and medical and building products: http://www.rense.com/general6/cow.htm