Mechanical performance of oil palm empty fruit bunches fibre reinforced polyester resin

Studies on natural fibers reinforced composite has been growing rapidly due to abundant and availability of wide variety of natural fibers. One of the most promising and readily available natural fiber is oil palm empty fruits bunch (EFB), a side product of palm oil industries. This fiber could be converted into useful materials by combining them with other polymer, such as polyester resin, to produce biodegradable composite. Based on other research about empty fruit bunch (EFB), there is no research about empty fruit bunch reinforced polyester resin. Thus this research was conducted to investigate the performance of Polyester-EFB composite as well as their biodegradability. The composite was prepared by mixing certain amount of EFB (of 2-4 mm length) to polyester resin and hardened with methyl ethyl ketone peroxide (MEKP). The resulted composite were characterized for their mechanical properties, water absorptivity and weight reduction over time. Polyester-EFB 50 have the highest value of tensile strength which is about 22.31 N/mm2. This result of Polyester-EFB 50 shows that the tensile properties of composites are markedly improved by adding fibers to a polymer matrix since fibers have much higher strength and stiffness values than those of the matrices.