Production of particle board using Sawdust and Plastic Waste
Loading...
Date
2015-03-30
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The high demand for forest timber has led to high deforestation rate worldwide. This
has caused negative impact on the environment. In Ghana, in the processing of these
forest timbers for export and domestic purposes enormous quantities of wood residues
including sawdust are produced annually and these residues are usually not put into
commercial use. Moreover, Ghana and most countries in the world are engulfed with
plastic waste emanating from drinking water manufacturers, plastic product
manufacturers as well as packages of materials. Studies are being conducted on the
search for the possible effective ways of utilisation of sawdust as well as possible
ways of recycling these plastics. This study focuses on the use of sawdust in the
production of particleboard using low density polyethylene as an adhesive. In the
production, the sawdust was collected and separated whiles the polyethylene was
collected, washed, dried and shredded. The two materials were mixed using plastic-sawdust combination (1:1.75, 1:2 and 1: 1.3). The mixture was pressed at a pressure
of 6.5kgcm
-2
in 1 hour and at two different temperatures (145
o
C and 200
o
C). The
moisture content and densities as well as bending and compression properties of the
boards were examined. Results show that the bending stress of the boards ranges from
0.7 to 3.07Nmm
-2
whiles that of the compression stress ranges from 0.399 to
3.242Nmm
-2
. The density of the boards also ranges from 316kgm
-3
to 383kgm
-3
at
3.0% - 4.7% moisture content. However, the highest bending stress of 3.07Nmm
-2
and
compression stress of 3.242Nmm
-2
was obtained from the board with 1:1.3kg plastic-sawdust combination and temperature of 200
o
C. Generally, the results of the physical
and mechanical properties of the sawdust and low density polyethylene particleboard
were comparable to medium density particleboards available.
iv
However, high temperature in the production was noticed to have resulted in boards
with low moisture content, whiles the reduction of polyethylene in the plastic-sawdust
combination of particleboards produced resulted in increased bending and
compression stresses of the boards.
Description
A thesis Submitted to the Department of Wood Science and Technology,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
in partial fulfilment of the Requirement for the Degree
of Master of Science in Wood Science and Technology