CHARACTERIZATION OF POLYURETHANE ADHESIVE PREPARED FROM LIQUEFIED EMPTY FRUIT BUNCH FIBER

摘要

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is the most important plantation crop in Malaysia as it is the major foreign exchange earner in the present decade. Approximately 22 percent of waste from the oil palm industry consists of the empty fruit bunch (EFB) fibers, one of the major sources of lignocellulosic material contains mainly cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and a small percentage of extractive materials. The purpose of this study is to find a method to produce polyurethane adhesive (PURAds) from EFB through the chemical modification reaction for 2 hours at the reaction temperature 80℃. In the first stage of synthesizing polyol for producing PURAds, the EFB fibers was chemically modified with epoxide groups and polyethylene glycol (PEG). Later, these polyol directly reacted with diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI). Various analyses were carried out such as FTIR and TGA. The Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) was used to characterize the chemical properties of the samples. IR data showed the existence of hydroxyl groups and C ≡ N stretch at 3500-3100cm~(-1) and 2273-2000cm~(-1) respectively. The Thermal Gravimetric Analyzer (TGA) was used to characterize the thermal properties of these samples. Thermogram results indicated that the thermal stability of these samples was shown to be better than EFB.