Using oil palm trunk (OPT) layered with empty fruit bunch (EFB), so-called hybrid plywood enhanced with palm oil ash nanoparticles, with phenol-formaldehyde (PF) resin as a binder, was produced in this study. The phenol-formaldehyde (PF) resins filled with different loading of oil palm ash (OPA) nanoparticles were prepared and used as glue for layers of the oil palm trunk (OPT) veneer and empty fruit bunch fibre mat. The resulting hybrid plywood produced was characterised. The physical, mechanical, thermal, and morphological properties of the hybrid plywood panels were investigated. The results obtained showed that the presence of OPA nanoparticles significantly affected the physical, mechanical, and thermal properties of the plywood panels. Significant improvements in dimension from water absorption and thickness swelling experiments were obtained for the plywood panels with the highest OPA nanoparticles loading in PF resin. The mechanical properties indicated that plywood composites showed improvement in flexural, shear, and impact properties until a certain loading of OPA nanoparticles in PF resin. Fracture surface morphology also showed the effectiveness of OPA nanoparticles in the reduction of layer breakage due to force and stress distribution. The thermal stability performance showed that PF filled OPA nanoparticles contributed to the thermal stability of the plywood panels. Therefore, the results obtained in this study showed that OPA nanoparticles certainly improved the characteristic of the hybrid plywood.
Plywood is a wood product frequently utilized in building as part of concrete formwork systems. In the concreting process, plywood formwork needs to be strongly made to withstand the pressure subjected by the wet concrete as well as the impact. To reduce the dependency on solid timber as plywood, oil palm stem offers alternative materials. There are four main weaknesses of oil palm stem (OPS) as a material for plywood manufacturing; high variations in density and moisture content (MC), high water absorption and high surface roughness. Therefore, this study modified the drying and treatment process of OPS veneer. The veneer was predried by using roller presser for removing a large amount of water and later treated with medium molecular weight phenolformaldehyde (MMwPF) to bond together parenchyma tissue, cell wall, and a lumen for much uniform density and better surface bonding. The Charpy impact of OPS plywood developed in this study denoted as PTA was investigated. These properties were compared with the properties of another two types of commercial OPS plywood denoted as PTB and PTC which were manufactured using OPS veneer with tropical hardwood veneer for face and back veneer and control plywood denoted as PTD which was manufactured using 100% tropical hardwood veneer. The results showed that PTA has the highest mean value of energy and strength for both notched and unnotched Charpy impact.
Currently in Malaysia, most of the plywood industries are using tropical hardwood veneer with combination of rubberwood to form plywood. The used of rubberwood has actively reduced the cost of plywood production but recently the price of rubberwood logs has increased due to the shortage of the supply. Due to the demand from other timber industries such as furniture and medium density board thus, alternative raw material which is not focuses on lignocellulosic material only but also on the residue can be offered. Oil palm stems (Elaeisguineensis Jacq) need to be explored as these stems are abundant after falling from plantations which have not been fully utilized due to their poor properties. The main drawback of oil palm is its low dimensional stability found in the stem parts. Therefore this study investigated the 100% oil palm stem (OPS) plywood denoted as PTA by optimizing the pre drying process of the veneer by using roller pressing machine, steam dryer and platen press machine. After the OPS veneers have been pre-dried, they were treated with Medium Molecular Weight Phenol Formaldehyde (MMwPF) resin before fabrication of OPS plywood. The product could be promoted as concrete foam, light weight partitions, wall panel and floor slabs. The fracture toughness of OPS plywood developed in this study denoted as PTA was investigated. These properties were compared with the properties of another two types of commercial OPS plywood denoted as PTB and PTC which were manufactured using OPS veneer with tropical hardwood veneer for face and back veneer and control plywood denoted as PTD which was manufactured using 100% tropical hardwood veneer. The highest value of plain strain and energy release was showed by PTA compared to commercial plywood. The failure was more prominent in wood which showed by the crack propagated line in the veneer layer.
There are four main weaknesses in using Oil Palm Stem (OPS) as a material for plywood manufacturing. High variation in density, moisture contents (MC), high water absorption and surface roughness. This paper report the investigation on the effect of water on physical properties of OPS plywood (PTA) namely water absorption, thickness swelling and delamination. These properties were compared with the properties of another two types of commercial OPS plywood denoted as PTB and PTC which were manufactured using OPS veneer with tropical hardwood veneer for face and back veneer and control plywood denoted as PTD which was manufactured using 100% tropical hardwood veneer. The results showed that PTA has lowest value of water absorption but has highest value of thickness swelling and delaminating.
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