Journal of Natural Fibers

ISSN: 1544-0478 (Print) 1544-046X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjnf20

On the Use of Residues from the Sustainable

Extraction of Heart of Palm in Agglomerated
Panels

D. C. P. Quinaya, E. S. da Silva & J. R. M. d’Almeida

To cite this article: D. C. P. Quinaya, E. S. da Silva & J. R. M. d’Almeida (2016) On the Use of
Residues from the Sustainable Extraction of Heart of Palm in Agglomerated Panels, Journal of
Natural Fibers, 13:2, 172-177, DOI: 10.1080/15440478.2014.1004009

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15440478.2014.1004009

Published online: 21 Mar 2016.

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 Journal of Natural Fibers, 13:172–177, 2016
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1544-0478 print/1544-046X online
DOI: 10.1080/15440478.2014.1004009

On the Use of Residues from the Sustainable Extraction

of Heart of Palm in Agglomerated Panels
Downloaded by [Bibliotecas E Docum Div], [José d'Almeida] at 06:02 22 March 2016

D. C. P. Quinaya, E. S. da Silva, and J. R. M. d’Almeida

Materials Engineering Department, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Residues obtained from the sustainable harvest of heart of palm from pejibaye (Bactris gasipaes) palms
can be managed to produce long and chopped fibers. These fibrous residues can be used to manufac-
ture agglomerated panels and also serve as reinforcement in polymer–matrix composites. In this work,
the characteristics of pejibaye fibrous residues are commented and the flexural mechanical properties
of agglomerated panels made with these residues are determined and compared with the properties of
conventional wood-based agglomerated panels. Also, panels using both pejibaye residues and residues
from coconut plantations were manufactured and their flexural mechanical behavior was determined
and compared to panels manufactured using only pejibaye residue. The results obtained show that the
flexural mechanical properties of pejibaye agglomerated panels fall within the boundaries established by
international standards for interior use (general applications–dry conditions). The hybrid coir/pejibaye
panel showed the best set of properties, presenting a performance better than the agglomerated panels
manufactured with only one kind of fiber.

Keywords: lignocellulosic fibers, agribusiness residues, agglomerated panels, flexural behavior

INTRODUCTION

Lignocellulosic fibers are being increasingly used to reinforce resin matrix in composite materials
due to the many advantages of these fibers in relation to the more conventional glass fibers. One

Address correspondence to J. R. M. d’Almeida, Materials Engineering Department, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do

Rio de Janeiro, Rua Marquês de São Vicente, 225-Gávea, 22451-900, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. E-mail: dalmeida@puc-rio.br

172
 HEART OF PALM AGGLOMERATED PANELS 173

can highlight as main advantages their biodegradability and the fact that lignocellulosic fibers are
obtained from renewable resources (Marsh 2003; Rowell et al. 2000). Other important aspect is their
neutrality with respect to CO2 emission (Mohanty et al. 2002). Also these fibers are less abrasive
than glass fibers, significantly reducing wear of the manufacturing equipment.
Lignocellulosic fibers can be extracted from a wealth of sources. Besides crops managed specifi-
cally to obtain fibers, such as jute and sisal, lignocellulosic fibers can also be obtained from residues
of crops intended to produce food or even flowers and ornamental plants. As an example of the first
case, coir fibers are obtained from the shell of coconuts, after the extraction of the liquid endosperm
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or of the copra (Kaz et al. 2004). The long stalks disregarded from several ornamental plants, such
as Heliconia bihai or Etlingera elatior can also be conveniently managed to extract fibers (Navarro
et al. 2013).
In fact, fibers obtained from residues of other crops are very attractive because their production
did not compete with food production in terms of labor or, and most important, in terms of soil.
In this context, fibers obtained from the residues of the sustainable production of heart of palm from
pejibaye (Bactris gasipaes) palms can be considered as an outstanding material. These fibers have
average mechanical properties when compared to those of more commonly used lignocellulosic
fibers, such as coir (Temer and d’Almeida 2012), and can be produced from pejibaye residues using
very simple equipment (d’Almeida and da Silva 2013). Previous works showed that pejibaye fiber
composites and agglomerates have suitable mechanical properties for various in-door applications
(Temer and d’Almeida 2012; Temer and d’Almeida 2014; d’Almeida 2013).
In this work, agglomerated panels using both pejibaye residues and residues from coconut plan-
tations were manufactured and their flexural mechanical behavior was determined and compared
to the panels manufactured using only pejibaye or coconut residues and to commercially available
wood-based panels.

EXPERIMENTAL METHODS AND MATERIALS

The panels were manufactured using chopped in natura pejibaye and coir fibers and a polyurethane
(PU) resin matrix derived from castor oil—with proprietary formulation. As reported in a previ-
ous work (Temer and d’Almeida 2012) chopped pejibaye fibers are obtained with lengths varying
from about 10 to 20 mm using an electrical crusher. Coir fibers with the same average lengths were
also used in this work. The fibers were first cooked and then were rinsed with flowing tap water
to remove impurities. The cooking of the fibers was made at 80◦ C, at a diluted solution of tap
water and 0.5%NaOH v/v. The procedure lasted 20 min, and was made using a stainless steel boiler
with continuous stirring. Chopped fibers were used instead of long fibers to obtain a more homo-
geneous distribution of fibers inside the molds during the manufacture of the agglomerated panels.
The procedure used to manufacture these panels was intended to be a low-cost one, avoiding expen-
sive equipment, and enabling the use of local labor with low technological skills. Therefore, fibers
and resin were thoroughly mixed and spread inside the mold’s cavity by hand. The mold used was
made from naval plywood and has a square area of 510 mm × 510 mm. To avoid adhesion of the
agglomerated panels with the mold’s walls, the mold was first lined with a 1 mm thick polypropylene
film. After being completely filled with the mixture of chopped fibers and PU matrix, the mold was
closed and the agglomerate was maintained under pressure at room temperature during 5 h.
Three types of panels were manufactured, namely: (i) Pejibaye-PU; (ii) Coir-PU; and (iii)
Pejibaye/Coir-PU. Figure 1 shows samples of the manufactured panels. These panels have a nominal
thickness of 15 mm, and have an apparent density of 0.7 kg/m3 , being therefore classified as medium
density panels, following the classification scheme of the ANSI A208.1 – 2009 standard used for
particle reinforced panels (ANSI 2009). All panels were manufactured with a fiber to resin mass
fraction of 70/30. The fiber ratio between pejibaye and coir fiber at the hybrid panel was 50/50.
Specimens 130 mm long, 50 mm large and with the thickness of each panel, as listed in Table 1,
 174 D. C. P. QUINAYA, E. S. DA SILVA, AND J. R. M. D’ALMEIDA

b
a
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FIGURE 1 Agglomerated materials manufactured: (a) coir, (b) hybrid, and (c) pejibaye.

TABLE 1
Properties and characteristics of the manufactured panels

Fiber used Thickness (mm) Flexural modulus (MPa) Tenacity (MJ/m3 )

Coir 14.5 100 ± 13 47 ± 12

Pejibaye 13.5 49 ± 17 89 ± 8
Coir-pejibaye 14.0 208 ± 23 90 ± 12

were machined from the panels and were tested in flexure using a three-point bending apparatus.
The test equipment used has a capacity of 10 kN, and the tests were conducted using a test speed of
10 mm/min, and a span to depth ratio of 8. Six specimens were tested per agglomerated composite
manufactured.

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Figure 2 shows the results of the flexural strength of the panels. Although their apparent density
falls within the boundary for medium density panels (i.e., 650 < ρ < 800 kg/m3 (ANSI 2009))
the values of the flexural strengths put these panels at the low density LD-1 class, for interior uses.
The values obtained for the flexural strength are, however, similar to the values of other agglom-
erates developed using residues from sugar cane bagasse (3.7–5.6 MPa (de Barros Filho 2009)) or
wheat straw (3.0 MPa (Boquillon et al. 2004)), and have similar densities. The statistical analysis
using the t-Student’s test with a significance level of 0.05 shows that the average value of coir fiber
agglomerate is not statistically significantly different from that of the pejibaye fiber agglomerate
(p = 0.2925) or from that of the hybrid coir-pejibaye agglomerate (p = 0.0650), but the average
values from the pejibaye agglomerate and the hybrid agglomerate are statistically different from
each other (p = 0.0016). These results indicate that the hybrid agglomerate has a better combina-
tion of properties than the pejibaye agglomerate, and that combining the fibrous residues from both
crops is a feasible alternative to manufacture suitable materials for indoor applications. It is worth
saying that, in Brazil, coconut plantations occupy about 280,000 hectares with a production of about
2 billion coconut fruits per year.
The values of other relevant flexural properties are listed in Table 1. It can be observed that
the agglomerated panels manufactured are low modulus materials. However, as described previ-
ously (Temer and d’Almeida 2014), this is a direct consequence of the flexible PU resin matrix
used to manufacture these agglomerates, in opposition to the usually rigid resins used to manu-
facture agglomerated panels, such as urea–formaldehyde. The choice of the flexible PU resin is,
 HEART OF PALM AGGLOMERATED PANELS 175

4,5
4,0

Flexural strength, MPa

3,5
3,0
2,5
2,0
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1,5
1,0
0,5
0,0
a b c
Agglomerated panels

FIGURE 2 Flexural strength of the agglomerated panels: (a) coir; (b) pejibaye; (c) coir-pejibaye.

however, based on the fact that its polyol component is derived from castor oil, and therefore it
is a more sustainable and less environmentally hazardous product. Although formaldehyde based
resins increases the stiffness of agglomerates, these materials have some disadvantages, mainly when
indoor uses are being envisaged, since formaldehyde emissions have to be avoided or minimized, as
clearly required by international standards (ANSI 2009). The results listed in Table 1 show that there
is, in fact, a synergistic effect when coir and pejibaye fibers are mixed, and the flexural modulus of
the hybrid agglomerate is higher than the modulus of the single fiber agglomerates, corroborating
the results already presented at Figure 2 in respect to the flexural strength. The results presented in
Table 1 agree with several data indicating that hybrid composites can present mechanical properties
higher than the properties of the composites manufactured with each of the fibers individually. This
behavior was first observed for composites manufactured with synthetic fibers, like glass and carbon
fiber hybrids (Short and Summerscales 1980), but, it is also observed when hybrid lignocellulosic
fiber–glass fiber are used (Abu Bakar et al. 2005). Several factors can lead to this synergistic behav-
ior, but until today a common theory unifying the behavior observed for the several different hybrid
composites does not exist. For instance, optimum hybrid results can be obtained when the fibers
are strain compatible (Sreekala et al. 2002). This observation will not hold in this work since coir
and pejibaye fibers present different values of deformation at rupture, namely, 15–25 for coir fibers
(Jawaid and Abdul Khalil 2011) and 1.5–2.2 for pejibaye (Temer and d’Almeida 2012). However,
a positive synergistic effect like the one obtained in this work was also observed when the impact
behavior of coir/glass hybrid composites was studied, although glass and coir fibers are not strain
compatibles (Wong et al. 2010). Therefore, the specific reason of the positive hybrid effect observed
for the flexural properties of the pejibaye/coir fiber composites developed in this work was not yet
determined, but it is a common feature also observed in other hybrid composites.
The tenacity of the composites was measured adjusting a polynomial function to the stress–
strain curve and then calculating the area under the curve by integration. An example of a typical
flexural stress–strain curve obtained is shown in Figure 3, along with the adjusted polynomial curve.
The values of the correlation coefficients between the experimental points and the adjusted curves
ranged from 0.991 to 0.998. The results show that the incorporation of pejibaye fibers is beneficial
to the toughness of the material, and statistically equal values were obtained when the agglomerate
manufactured with only pejibaye fiber and the hybrid pejibaye/coir fiber agglomerate are compared.
 176 D. C. P. QUINAYA, E. S. DA SILVA, AND J. R. M. D’ALMEIDA

4.0

3.0

Stress (MPa)
2.0

1.0

0.0
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0.00 10.00 20.00 30.00

–1.0
Strain (%)

FIGURE 3 Example of the method used to calculate the tenacity of the composites.

CONCLUSIONS

The results obtained show that agglomerated panels with suitable flexural mechanical properties and
density, and with an appearance similar to wood-based agglomerates can be manufactured using a
very simple technological route, using residues from the sustainable agribusiness of heart of palm.
The results show that the fibers extracted from the leftover of pejibaye palms can be used alone or
combined with coir fibers. In fact, the hybrid pejybaye/coir fiber panels presented better properties
than the panels manufactured with only one kind of fiber, revealing a synergistic effect when the
fibers of these two residues are combined. The use of this residue to manufacture agglomerates or
composites is very promising and can add value to a material that nowadays is disregarded at the
plantation after collection of heart of palm.

FUNDING

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Brazilian Agency CNPq and to the
enterprise Fibra Design, Brazil, for the donation of the fibers.

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