THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF FILLED EMPTY FRUIT BUNCH RIGID POLYURETHANE FOAM

摘要

Many researches were investigated use the vegetable oil as a raw material in replacing the polyol based petrochemical, which were used widely in the polyurethane industry. Approximately 22% of waste from the oil palm industry consists of the EFB fibers. These resources, along with a vast quantity of agricultural residues, can be utilized in natural fiber-based composites. This paper described the effect of empty fruit bunch (EFB) loading in the medium density rigid foam, which was prepared from the palm kernel oil based polyol. The grounded 300μm EFB fiber was used as filler and its composition were varied from 3, 6, 9 and 12 weight percent. EFB filled PU shown good dimensional stability at 70℃ and -15℃ due expending and shrinking percentage which are less than 0.8% and 0.4% respectively. The mechanical properties were improved with the addition of EFB fiber. The result had shown that the compressive and tensile strength increases almost linearly with increasing filler content, but decrease when it reached optimum filler content. The tensile strength was increased until 11.2 MPa and the compression strength was about 2.5 MPa. The addition of EFB had improved the impact strength of PU foam up to 1.88 kJ/m~2. The rheological properties and the hardness of the foam also improved with the addition of EFB fibers.