PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE

The empty fruit bunch of oil palm (EFB) is the solid waste that is generated at palm oil mills. In 2012 only, it was available in large amounts by more than 50 million tons worldwide. Its utilisation for technical purposes is unfortunately very limited and so far, it is still less value-added. It would be interesting to discover the appropiate technology so that the biomass has an added-value such utilisation for technical and commercial products. Fibre from EFB can be processed to be environmentally-friendly composites by mixing the fibres with renewable binding agents based on starch such as potato starch. There are some options to forming the between product into a composite such as creating a dough base first that is then laminated and finally mixed (nonwoven). Experiments to produce possible composites can be done where the combination between product and technology matches so that the fibres are spread randomly and homogenously throughout the body of the composite. The variables for this option of producing a composite with a thickness of 2 mm are a temperature of 180°C, press duration of 5-15 min and pressure of about 10-30 bar where the modulus of elasticity is about 7 GPa.