Hora, G.G.HoraThole, V.V.Thole2022-03-102022-03-102007https://publica.fraunhofer.de/handle/publica/354960The 9th Malaysian Plan (Chapter 18) calls to further exploit and promote the opportunities of oil palm diversification by its biomass conversion into panel products, such as fibreboards, particle boards derived from EFB and "green plywood". MPOB has been earmarked as Incubation Centre to undertake strategic research also in collaboration with international R&D centres. In the past years the Biomass Technology Group has developed Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) from 100 % EFB, OPF and OPT supported by Fraunhofer, WKI in Germany which provided scientific and technical consultancy service and operation training at the MDF pilot of BTC. MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard) is one of the most important wood-based panel products for the global building and furniture industry. Biomass from Palm Resources reveals an exploitable potential for MDF in different global zones. In spite, path finding results for oil palm and date palm biomass are existing a majority of knowledge is still missing for a reliable manufacturing process. Thus the presentation focuses on mandatory R&D efforts targeting on the optimization of the processing technology for Oil Palm Fibres (OPF) in order to establish a reliable protocol for the MDF manufacturing by including cost-saving operations. Special focus here lies on the source and quality of the fibrous raw material and the impact of mat formation and pressing conditions on MDF board quality. Fibre dissolution is carried out in a closed system which consists of an aggregate for material supply, a digester, a refiner and a gluing plant. The cooking time and the temperature must in each case be adapted to the quality of the processed raw material and necessary OPF geometry. Too short cooking times will increase dust particle formation and longer cooking times might result in higher portions of water-soluble substances which could migrate into the waste water resulting in soluble portions of the lignin and parts of the hemicelluloses to be decomposed. The result would decrease in OPF yield. The optimal thermal process parameters need thorough investigations. Another important research objective is to determine the economic and technically appropriate raw material composition resulting in a reliable MDF processing and manufacturing procedure. Beyond others R&D investigation shall mainly reveal the impact of raw material collection, Storage and pre-processing on OPF quality, set optimal fibrous dissolution parameters and state the optimal requirements for the gluing process depending on OPF qualities.en674conference paper