Development of Particleboard from Green Coconut Waste

Abstract

In this study, green coconut waste was successfully transformed into coconut fibre-based particleboards. In addition to urea-formaldehyde (UF), two types of green binder: BST00 (low ammoniated latex and epoxidized natural rubber latex-based) and BST20 (epoxidized natural rubber latex-based) were used in particleboard fabrication. The particleboards were fabricated using coconut pith and fibre with 15% binder loading through two pre-compression steps followed by a final hot compression at 140 °C for 15 mins at ∼2.1 MPa. Board properties such as density, thickness swelling (TS), water absorption (WA), and internal bond (IB) strength were determined in accordance with JIS A 5908 standard, except for modulus of rupture (MOR) (ASTM D1037). BST00-bonded particleboards exhibit the poorest properties among the three samples, making BST00 the least effective binder. BST20-bonded particleboards show the best overall properties with the highest density of ∼1 g/cm3, IB value of 0.416 MPa, MOR of 11.61 MPa, best water resistance with TS of 14% and WA of 24%. The UF-bonded particleboards have the highest MOR of 12.05 MPa. Overall, the UF- and BST20-bonded coir particleboards met the minimum JIS A 5908 requirement except density (0.4-0.9 g/cm3) and TS (<12%). The green binder BST20 has shown great potential to replace UF.