A new eco-friendly mechanical technique for production of rice straw fibers for medium density fiberboards manufacturing

Abstract

Rice straw is the most abundant lignocellulosic waste material that may be exploited to produce natural fibers used in manufacturing of medium density fiberboards. However, it contains high amount of wax that impairs the absorptivity of the produced fibers to liquid adhesives. Moreover, the high level of silica and ash contents may cause a severe damage to the conventional disk refiners that used to produce fibers. Therefore, costly chemical pretreatments are essential to produce rice straw fibers which prohibit commercial production of rice straw medium density fiberboard. This paper presents a novel eco-friendly mechanical technique for production of rice straw fibers. A full-scale manufacturing system was designed and established to produce rice straw fibers as an alternative raw material for manufacturing of medium density fiberboards. The proposed technique, in contrary to conventional techniques, eliminates the use of harmful chemicals and minimizes power consumption. Moreover, better fibers with minimum silica content and enhanced water absorptivity properties were obtained. Full material characterization of the produced fibers was carried out using scanning electron microscope and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The mechanical and physical properties of the produced fiberboards were tested and were proved to meet the standard requirements of EN 622, EN 317, and EN 310.