Abstract
Rattan furniture had produced high amount of wastes with different particle sizes that could be used in manufacturing binderless boards (BB), which were the boards that reduced or excluded the use of synthetic resins in board production. Therefore this research is executed to study the effect of particle sizes of rattan furniture waste (RFW) on the properties of BB produced via hot-pressing technique. The pressing parameters is fixed at the temperature of 180°C, pressing load of 1.5 MPa and holding time of 5 min using different particle sizes of 50, 100, 250 and 500 μm and denoted as BB50, BB100, BB250 and BB500 respectively. All the BB samples underwent bending, internal bonding, thickness swelling, water absorption and morphological testing. The BB50 had the best properties with modulus of rupture (MOR) of 24.3 MPa, internal bonding (IB) of 0.35 MPa, thickness swelling (TS) of 20.2% and water absorption (WA) of 48.2%. scanning electron microscope (SEM) morphology shows the compact and tight bonding among fibres for BB50. In contradict, the BB500 had the lowest values due to weak bonding and occurrence of voids inside the BB. Physical consolidation among the fibres inside BB and degradation of chemical components inside RFW were the anticipated self-bonding mechanism that occurred during the production of BB via this hot-pressing process.
Highlights
The production of rattan furniture for house decoration in replacing wood, had become one of the most important non-timber forest products with large worldwide market of exporting values of RM3.3 million in 2016.1 The great versatility of rattan such as its durability, elasticity, light-weight, shiny and flexibility can be used in various applications, for instance furniture industries, construction materials, household articles, tool handles, lifting heavy items and bridge construction
The strength of internal bond principally depended upon the internal bonding among fibres, instigated by chemical bonding from the reaction of heat applied onto chemical components inside the rattan furniture waste (RFW) fibres
The BB50 and BB100 had met the minimum requirement of board standards for 13.0 MPa of modulus of rupture (MOR) values; for the internal bonding (IB) values, all the manufactured binderless boards (BB) met the minimum requirement of board standard except for BB500.17 The smaller the size of fibres used, positively increased the bonding of fibres and the properties of manufactured BB
Summary
The production of rattan furniture for house decoration in replacing wood, had become one of the most important non-timber forest products with large worldwide market of exporting values of RM3.3 million in 2016.1 The great versatility of rattan such as its durability, elasticity, light-weight, shiny and flexibility can be used in various applications, for instance furniture industries, construction materials, household articles, tool handles, lifting heavy items and bridge construction. The existing commercial boards generally made of woody and non-woody based materials, which are mixed with synthetic resins such as urea-formaldehyde (UF) or phenol-formaldehyde (PF) during the manufacturing process to increase the boards' strength, quality and reliability. This synthetic resin could bring side effects on human's health such as cancer and irritation of eyes, nose and throat; and lead to environmental pollution.[4] The possible way to overcome these problems is by reducing or excluding the use of synthetic resins in board manufacturing, as self-bonded or binderless boards. The development of binderless boards (BB) using various kinds of renewable raw materials have been introduced since early 1980s, which promises brighter prospect because of its good qualities which found to be environmental-friendly, renewable, recyclable and economical.[5,6,7,8]
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