Conservation of Neotropical migratory birds in tropical hardwood and oil palm plantations

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.

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Fracture Toughness of Medium Molecular Weight Phenol Formaldehyde (MMwPF) Plywood

Journal of Advanced Research in Applied Sciences and Engineering Technology ◽

10.37934/araset.19.1.2127 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 19 (1) ◽

pp. 21-27

Author(s):

Ahmad Muzaffar Abdul Aziz ◽

Hasmawi Khalid

Keyword(s):

Fracture Toughness ◽

Molecular Weight ◽

Oil Palm ◽

Phenol Formaldehyde ◽

Raw Material ◽

Tropical Hardwood ◽

Floor Slabs ◽

Plain Strain ◽

Low Dimensional ◽

And Control

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.

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