Mechanical and physical properties of oil palm trunk core particleboard bonded with different UF resins.

Rapid price increases and reduc­tion in the sup­ply of rub­ber­wood has forced the par­ti­cle­board man­u­fac­tur­ers to look for new alter­na­tive raw mate­ri­als. The pro­duc­tion of par­ti­cle­board from other wood species will be a good solu­tion to the prob­lem of deplet­ing wood sup­plies. The objec­tive of this study was to eval­u­ate the prop­er­ties of par­ti­cle­board made from rub­ber­wood and oil palm trunk pressed at dif­fer­ent tem­per­a­tures and times com­pared to par­ti­cle­boards made from sin­gle species. Two types of UF resins (E1 resin and SE0 resin) were applied in this study. The effect of surface-to-core ratio was also exam­ined in this study. The mod­u­lus of rup­ture, inter­nal bond strength and thick­ness swelling of the boards were eval­u­ated based on the Japan­ese Indus­trial Stan­dard for par­ti­cle­board (JIS A 5908:2003). After eval­u­a­tion, the pan­els pro­duced are a poten­tial sub­sti­tute to the pan­els made from pure rubberwood.