Recently, there has been an increasing expansion in the area planted with forest trees in Egypt. This has been carried out for environmental protection as well as for utilization purposes. The balance between sustainability of the plantation grown species and the demand for wood has been taken into consideration especially due to the increasing local need for wood and wood products under the changing world condition. One way for maintaining this balance is through improving the quality of wood panel made of these species.
Particleboard industry in Egypt depends mainly on Casuarina wood as a raw material. The boards produced are of relatively low quality. Therefore, a large research program was undertaken to examine the possibility of improving the quality of Casuarina particleboards. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to report on the results of various attempts that were made along this direction. Several mixtures of Casuarina wood and flax shives, willow (Salix safsaf) or date palm fronds were prepared and used for manufacturing boards. The results obtained so far indicated that mixing Casuarina with flax shives or date palm fronds as agricultural residues or willow, a low density wood, improved the mechanical properties (modulus of elasticity, modulus of rupture, and internal bond strength) and dimensional stability (thickness swelling and water absorption) of particleboard.
Key words: particleboard, properties, Casuarina, flax shives, willow, palm fronds.
Correspondence: M.L.M. El-Osta, Department of Forestry and Wood Technology, Faculty of Agriculture, Alexandria University El-Shatby, Alexandria, Egypt