The Performance of Melamine – Urea – Formaldehyde Resin with Palm Kernel as Filler

Abstract

Palm kernel meal (PKM) which is the by-products of palm oil industry consists of considerable amount of protein that showed its great potential to to be used as a filler of melamine-urea-formaldehyde (MUF) resin based wood adhesive. Besides, due to the high price of melamine, it is attempted to reduce the content of melamine in MUF resins to as low as possible. So, in this study, PKM was used as filler in MUF resin based wood adhesive to study its effects toward the performance of the adhesive. In practical, the shear strength performance tests are done by using automated bonding evaluation system (ABES). However, ABES is a destructive test that only produces one point of data per test. So, in order to make the evaluation of the prediction data more convenience, a response surface methodology D-optimal method was approached. From the results, it has shown that increasing in temperature and pressing time is not always true in obtaining higher shear strength performance for MUF resin with PKM as filler. Smaller the particle size of PKM filler in MUF resin, shorter time the high shear strength performance can be achieved. Also, the relationships of temperature, pressing time and particle size of PKM to obtain optimum and maximum shear strength were studied.