Fourier Transform Infrared Analysis of Sawdust and Rice Husks Waste: A Raw Material for Eco-Friendly Composite Production

Wood has been the most essential components of engineering materials in the building and construction sector. Except for industrial roofing, virtually all roofing in building is done with wood. The flakes or chips generated from resizing of wood logs results in waste known as sawdust waste. The generated sawdust is not used for any economic value; thus, the dumps are either burnt or decomposed in the surrounding and flakes generated from wood plaining are used as adsorbent in poultry house. Nevertheless, bulk of it end up as waste littered on the environment being a menace to the ecosystem. In this work, sawdust from softwood, hardwood and rice husk were processed and characterized to study their functional groups and fingerprints using Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, with the aim of identifying its compatibility for use in composite material production with an appropriate binder for comfort of occupants in indoor build environment. The instrument operates on wide range of wave numbers which identify the existing functional group (4000 cm-1 1500 cm-1) and fingerprint (1500 cm -1 – 400 cm -1 ) in the assign band at a particular intensity within the wavenumber radiation frequency. The results from this study revealed that, softwood sawdust showed 11 peaks containing mainly aromatic compound dominated by alcohols and phenols, hardwood sawdust showed 21 peaks containing carboxylic acids, aldehydes, alkanes, alkenes and nitrile in addition to the alcohols and phenols in softwood sawdust and rice husks showed 23 peaks in the spectra in addition to the aromatic compounds it contain glutamines, nitriles and carboxylic compounds found in starch and pharmaceutical use. Both materials have the industrial potentials in particleboard production and can provide friendly indoor quality in building environment.