Eco-Friendly Particle Board Made from Natural Fibre

Ong, Wei Shun (2022) Eco-Friendly Particle Board Made from Natural Fibre. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

potential in the furniture industry in terms of its high availability, exceptional physical and mechanical properties and most importantly, environmentally friendly. Besides that, with the collaboration with Plastic & Rubber Institute Malaysia, green binder (BST20) were provided to test the suitability to use in particleboard fabrication process and the possibility to replace the commercial binder (Urea Formaldehyde). The particleboard produced were using different binder (UF and BST20) and different binder content of 15%, 20%, and 25% in which for 15% of binder content are having 30g of binder and added into 200g of coconut fibre in order to determine the physical properties of the particleboards. The particleboards were fabricated through hot compression at 140ºC for 15 minutes at 2.1 MPa followed by 10 minutes of cooling. Testing such as density, moisture content, thickness swelling and water absorption, internal bonding strength and bending strength (ASTM D1037) were performed to determine the physical and mechanical properties of the particleboard according to the JIS A 5908 standard for Type 8 particleboard. Most of the testing results for two different types of binder (UF and BST20) and different binder content (15%, 20%, and 25%) of bonded particleboard produced met the minimum requirement stated in the standard except the thickness swelling test. From the testing results among different binder content of UF bonded boards, 25% UF shows the highest properties on density, with an average of 0.9482g/cm3, lowest percentage of thickness swelling (21.11%), water absorption of 12.35% and highest internal bonding strength of 0.345 MPa, and second higher of bending strength of 13.6656Mpa. On the other hand, BST20 was considered as less effective binder because its physical and mechanical properties are the lowest among all the samples. But then from the testing results among different binder content of BST bonded boards, 25% BST shows the second highest properties on density, with an average of 0.7847g/cm3, lowest percentage of thickness swelling (48.46%), water absorption of 48.94% and highest internal bonding strength of 0.385MPa, but the bending strength are just 5.9604Mpa which are not met the requirement of JIS standard. Lastly, even the thickness swelling and water absorption level of BST20 bonded boards are worst compare to UF bonded boards. But then, BST20 still have the possibility to replace the commercial binder, UF due to the similar physical and mechanical properties attained. Nevertheless, the binder loading of UF cannot increasing uncontrollable due to its carcinogenic effect whereas the binder content of the green binder (BST20) can be increased during the fabrication processes to obtain a better physical and mechanical properties of the particleboard since BST20 does not cause any hazardous effect to human health such as respiratory or nasal cancer. Therefore, there is a huge opportunity in the market should a real optimized working BST20 bonded coir particleboard is developed.