Medium Density Fiberboards from Date Palm Residues a Strategic Industry in the Arab World

The success of the environmental movements world-wide has led to the decrease of wood availability in the world market, and hence to the soaring of wood prices .This in turn has led to the increase of the burden on the balance of payment of the Arab countries, relying on the importation of wood to satisfy the needs of their populations in shelter, furniture, etc. Meanwhile, the Arab World includes the palm belt extending from Morocco in the far West to Iraq in the Far East. Therefore, it makes sense to look to the date palm residues, mainly resulting from the palm pruning, as a sustainable renewable material base to locally manufacture wood substitutes as, for the example, the composite panels including the medium density fiber boards (MDF), particle boards, block boards, etc. Within a research project, conducted by the Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University with the collaboration of the ministry of environment, samples of the date palm secondary products have been collected in proportion with the available products of palm pruning (palm midribs, leaflets, spadix stems and coir), threshed and sent to the laboratory of Deshna MDF factory in Kena governorate .The result of tests confirm that the MDF samples, manufactured from the date palm secondary products, satisfy the mechanical and physical requirements of international standards of MDF. A technical and economic feasibility study has been conducted on a suggested industrial project to manufacture MDF boards in ELBahariah oases. The results of this study show that the profitability indicators of this project are high: the return rate on invested capital is (39.4%), the revenue to cost rate is (1.43:1), the payback period is 3.6 years and the internal rate of return is 36.2%. Introduction The success of the environmental movements world-wide has led to the decrease of wood availability in the international market. This has led to the soaring of wood prices, which has increased the burden on the balance of payments in the Arab countries, relying basically on importation to satisfy people's need, of wood for shelter, furniture, etc. Meanwhile, the Arab countries are distinguished with the date palm belt extending from Morocco in the West to Iraq in the East including ∼ 102.4 million palms [5]. Thus, it is logic to look to the products of pruning of date palm as a renewable and sustainable resource for the manufacture of wood substitutes, such as the medium density fiberboards (MDF), particle boards (pb), blockboards, etc. Present Status of Wood Market: A Case Study from Egypt Fig. 1 illustrates the value of Egypt’s wood imports until 2011 [8]. It is clear that beginning from 2000 the value of wood imports is steadily ascending reaching ∼ 2.5 billion US$ in 2011. Fig. 2 [10] illustrates the change of value of Egypt’s wood imports during the period from 2000 to By-Products of Palm Trees and Their Applications Materials Research Forum LLC Materials Research Proceedings 11 (2019) 99-112 doi: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644900178-6 10