Fabrication of strawboard by a sustainable approach using agricultural waste biomass.

This work was focused on the manufacturing of strawboard from agricultural waste like wheat straw (WS) and rice straw (RS) as natural resources of fibre by a sustainable and eco-friendly approach. Pineapple crown waste (PCW) fibre was used to replace the binder chemicals that are being used in the strawboard manufacturing industries to improve their quality in terms of mechanical strength properties. The strawboard with admirable properties like 4.74 mN·m²/g tear index, 14.96 N·m/g tensile indexes, 1526 m breaking length, 8.87 burst factor, and 20.3 stiffness factor was developed by adding 40% of PCW with 60% of WS pulp which was prepared by hydrothermal treatment of the material at 165 °C followed by the refiner mechanical pulping of the material. In addition to that, blending 60% RS with the same quantity of PCW pulp could develop strawboard with similar properties as that of wheat straw, which met the grade A and grade B strawboard required specifications as per Indian Standard: 2647–1967. The step towards utilizing agricultural waste to develop chemical-free strawboard not only minimizes the dumping of waste into the open field but also reduced the chemical utilization by the strawboard manufacturing industries, with PCW fibre that has been measured about 43% and 48% longer than WS and RS fibre, these could be the main reasons for developing such kind of strawboard with high mechanical properties. The fibre quality (morphology, crystallinity, and functional groups) of the different materials used was verified by different characterization techniques, such as FE-SEM, XRD, and FTIR-ATR analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]