Development and Characterization of MMT Based Phenol-Furfural Resin from Green Feedstocks (Saccharum Munja & Peanut Shells) and Their Applications for Woodware Fabrications

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.