| Summary: | Oil palm trunk is one of the lignocellulosic materials with high carbohydrate content,
which can be potentially manufactured as binderless particle board. The quality of binderless
particle board was affected by several factors, such as press cycle and particle size. There
were only few researches focused on effect of press cycle in making binderless particle
board. Date. Therefore, this research aims to analyze the effect of press cycle and particle size
on the properties of binderless particle board made from oil palm trunk.
This research was conducted in accordance with completely randomized design with
two factors was press cycle and particle size. Press cycle in this research consisted of one
stage cycle for 10 minutes and three stage cycle for 10 minutes with breathing stage at 2.5
minutes, 5 minutes and 7.5 minutes. Particle sizes used were coarse particle (retrained 10 mm
mesh) and fine (passed 10 mesh). The pressing conditions were 180°C of pressure
temperature and 2.7 MPa of specific pressure, while the density target was 0.9 g/cm
3
. The
physical and mechanical properties tests were moisture content, density, thickness swelling,
water absorption, surface roughness, modulus of rupture, modulus of elasticity, internal bond
strength all in accordance with Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) A 5908-2003. Data was
then examined by variance analysis (ANOVA) in 1% and 5% of significant level followed by
Honestly Significant Difference Tukey test.
Results showed an interaction between press cycle and particle size to the density of
particle board. The press cycle only influenced the internal bond strength while particle size
significantly influenced the value of moisture content, thickness swelling, water absorption,
surface roughness, modulus of rupture, modulus of elasticity and internal bond strength. The
best condition in this research was three stage press cycle with the breathing stage at 5
minute. At that condition, binderless board made from coarse particle had optimum
properties of 8.85% of moisture content, 0.84 of density, 62% of thickness swelling, 104 %
of water absorption, 14.19 µm of surface roughness, 2.92 MPa of modulus of rupture, 1.80
GPa of modulus elasticity and 0.22 MPa of internal bond strength.
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