Abstract:
Economy of today’s world is exploding causing the shortage of various basic necessities of life
like food, shelters, clothing, domestic fuel and other basic living articles due to depletion of their
feedstock resources. Scientists are working on various options to explore alternative ways to
achieve better solution to these basic needs. Plant wastes are good alternative feedstock due to ease
of availability, economical cost and renewable raw materials. Keeping in view above mentioned
issues and golden rules of green chemistry; non-edible plant and plant wastes were opted for this
study. Saccharum Munja is a native non edible plant with very low market value while peanut
shells are plant wastes of food processing industry. These two renewable materials were extracted
for furfural through modified acid digestion method. Furfural is an important chemical in industry
as well as better option to synthesize polymers from it. A significant amount of furfural i.e. 58.35%
from Saccharum Munja and 44.84% from Peanut Shells was extracted from both sources
respectively. Furfural was characterized by FTIR, NMR and UV. Extracted furfural was reacted
with phenol to prepare phenol-furfural resin, an alternative to phenol-formaldehyde resin but with
no harmful effects to human. Synthesized resin was also blended with montmorillonite clay to
improve thermal properties. These resin and composites were characterized by XRD, SEM, TGA,
FTIR and NMR techniques.
Resultant resin and composites were very adhesive so further employed as binding agent to make
plywood from left over plant residue of furfural extraction by hot press. As-prepared plywood
samples were mechanically tested through compression tests and hardness tests by Rockwell
Hardness Tester and Universal Testing Machine. Hardness values were found to be 64RHB which
is greater than mild copper with hardness value 48.9RHB, while no toxic resin was used and no
residue left over.
