Production of oil palm trunk core board with wood veneer lamination

Malaysia has abundant oil palm trunks (opt) from the replanting cycle of oil palm plantations,and these are convertible into value-added products. the most impending and immediate application is for wood composite products. unlike softwood or hardwood,opt has a unique physicochemical structure but is inefficient for use in its natural condition in woody application. in this study,the properties of opt were upgraded via the formation of a core board and lamination process. opt,as the core layer,was laminated with rubberwood veneers of two thicknesses using urea formaldehyde resin as a binder at three different levels of glue spread rate,and further hot pressed under three different levels of pressures. tests for density,static bending,shear and water absorption were carried out in accordance with astm standard. the results show that the board using higher glue spread rate and pressing pressure ended up with higher resistance to water absorption and to dimensional changes. the mechanical properties of the opt core board laminated with 1.0 mm veneer thickness using 200 g m-2 glue spread rate and 80 bar pressing pressure were better than the boards produced by other processing variables.