Development on natural fibre based materials in Malaysia building industry: An overview

Development on natural fibre based materials in Malaysia building

industry: An overview

Abstract— The main objective of this paper is to review the

Natural fibres such as wood and vegetable fibre offer development of natural fibre based material for building
many advantages such as renewability, recyclability industry to establish the natural fibres as a suitable
low specific gravity and high specific strength. The reinforcement for cement products particularly in
demand for green building material has been gaining Malaysia background.
attention over the past decades as contemporary
lifestyle calls for more products that are
environmental friendly, economically viable and to be II. HOW IT GET STARTED
provided with healthy places to live and work. The
unique balance of natural fibre properties would open Coutts[2] stated that James Hardie and Co Pty
up new market development opportunities in the Ltd as a pioneer in wood fibre cement industry in
green material world. This review confirms that there Australia. The company started manufacturing asbestos
are numerous papers discussing about the use of cement products in 1917. Then they expanded their
natural fibre for building material using their local business in asbestos manufacturing product to New
plant fibres. In Malaysia most of the studies only focus Zealand in 1938 and continued to Malaysia in 1964 with
on producing EFB as MDF and pulp and paper the formation in1966 of United Asbestos Cement Berhad
products. The development of the natural fibre based which is the joint venture between James Hardie
material especially in building products are discussed Industries, Turner and Newall, European Eternit
briefly, particularly with reference to global and Asian companies and 51% of Malaysian ownership. In
activities. Indonesia, the production started in 1970 with P.T.
Harfkex Asbes Semen. Thus, by 1977, James Hardie
Industries had 29 plants in Australasia including
Keywords—fibre reinforced cement, natural fibre, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand with
building material, green material 6500 employers.
Between early and mid 1940s, James Hardie and Co.
I. INTRODUCTION Pty Ltd. took an active interest in the use of cellulose, as
an asbestos substitute, in fibre reinforced cement. A study
The developments of green building material to discover whether paper pulp could be used to replace
particularly roofing products are a challenge in asbestos completely or partially in asbestos cement was
developing countries. With increased concerns for safe conducted by Heath and Hackworthy at Camellia, NSW
and green building material, new researches are during the post World War II due to the worldwide
conducted to adapt available raw-materials and shortage of asbestos fibre then [3].
production systems to fit the consumer requirements. Baggase, groundwood, wheat straw, cement bags and
Recently, the use of natural fibre reinforced cement as brown paper were among the fibres under investigation.
building components is increasing rapidly especially in Brown paper (Kraft) was selected as the best of the pulp
developed countries. It is found that the possibility to source with greatest strength to the composite material.
produce lightweight building components from natural In the early 1970s a global community agreed to be
fibres that have good mechanical performance, contribute legislated for the removal of asbestos due to health
to energy saving, suitable thermal-acoustic insulation and issues[2]. This was the turning point for the natural fibre
are economically viable. reinforced cement industry.
The introduction of vegetables plants and their fibres as
a part of building material can be a good replacement to
III. FIBRES
asbestos cement. In practice, it can be a good alternative
due to low cost building, as long as the low durability
risks in an alkaline environment are eliminated[1]. Fibre can derived from natural fibre or
In Malaysia, the uses of oil palm biomass are not fully manmade fibre as showed in Figure 1. In this paper, focus
utilised. Besides using this material for furniture, there is is on the vegetable origin (leaf, seed, bast and grass
still lack of information available about using it for fibres) and wood origin (hardwood or softwood and
construction material in particular as roofing material. agricultures residues). The fibres offer many advantages
Most studies only focused on producing EFB as MDF and such as renewable material, recyclability,
pulp and paper products. In fact, there are few studies on biodegradability, low specific gravity and high specific
the impact of using material made of natural fibres on the strength [4].
energy consumption for sustainable building.
 Development on natural fibre based materials in Malaysia building industry: An overview

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Figure 1: Classification of fibres [5] Figure 2: Schematic diagram of stress-strain behaviour of

plain and natural fibre reinforced mortar [10] .
In tropical countries the wastes generated during the
production of vegetable fibres can represent an important Berhane [10] noticed that one way to detect this
source of raw materials for the production of building adverse affect is to prepare the fibre reinforced mortar
components. The success of this application depends on specimens and test them for flexural strength at different
the available amount of residues and their geographical age. If one plots the stress-strain curves from such test
dispersion related to the costs of transportation and results, it is possible to detect the loss of ductility of the
locality [6] . mortar. Figure 2 shows the schematic stress and strain
The selection of natural fibre for building material curves of unreinforced mortar and the mortar reinforced
especially for roofing has been considered by many with short and long natural fibres.
countries. They found plenty of opportunities in
manufacturing from domestic raw materials at a
comparative low cost as natural fibre will increase the V. RESEARCH IN NATURAL FIBRE
cohesion of the fresh concrete mortar and ease the
production process of cooling materials [1]. Vegetable fibres are widely available in most
As stated by Swamy [7] the fibre act as a developing countries including Malaysia. The fibres can
reinforcement when the concrete hardened. The fibres in be used as convenient material for brittle matrix
concrete and cement matrices are used to control and reinforcement which is well known for application aimed
delay the tensile cracking of the matrix. at improving strength. Low elasticity modulus
reinforcements such as cellulose fibres improve the
energy absorption of composites in the post-cracking
IV. THE PROBLEM WITH NATURAL FIBRE
stage[1].
The short fibres in brittle matrices perform good
In early stage of research on natural fibres, most response to impact solicitation due to enormous ability for
researchers found that using natural fibres such as sisal in dynamic energy dissipation [11, 12]. Natural fibres help
cement and concrete gave disappointing result. This is to reinforce and strengthen cement and concrete and have
due to high water absorption by the fibres resulting in a great potential because of the abundance and availability
high water/cement ratio for a reasonable workable mortar of natural fibres in many parts of the world, and also
mix. This include the setting of Portland cement paste because they lead directly to energy savings, conservation
being retarded by impurities leaching out of the chopped of a country’s scarce resources and reduction in
sisal fibres [8]. environmental pollution [13].
After further research by many researchers, they found Much research has been carried out incorporating such
that the above problem is due to unclean natural fibres. natural fibres to produce composites especially EFB [14,
The natural fibres need to be cleaned properly with all 15], kenaf [16], banana fibre [16], jute [17] etc. The
impurities removed before used. Despite that Gram [9] advantage of the lignocellulosic materials over synthetic
discovered that Portland cement hydration products with fibres like carbon or glass fibre include their acceptable
high pH values deteriorate natural fibres in mortar. As a specific strength properties, low cost, low density, non-
result, in a short time this process also makes them brittle, abrasive, enhanced energy recovery and biodegradable
as short as six months in tropical climates which will also [18].
makes the mortar less ductile with time. Furthermore they have good thermal stability [19] and
provide excellent insulation against heat and noise [20]
which increased the value of these bio-fibres. Ease in
processing also gives advantage to bio-fibres over
synthetics fibres. Some applications of insulating boards
are given in Table 1.
 Development on natural fibre based materials in Malaysia building industry: An overview

B. Asia
TABLE 1:
After World War II, a building centre were built in
INSULATING BOARD APPLICATIONS [21]
Kyoto, Japan for the development of building materials
using bamboo fibres which have been used in composite
Name Intended Use panels [25]. Bagasse and soybean stalks are also used to
Sound-Deadening In wall assemblies to control sound produce the particleboards. Other products are hardboards
board transmission from Thai hardwood and coconut fibres [26].
Roof insulating Under built-up roof system In India the combination of industrial and agricultural
board Under single-ply roof system wastes which integrate cement and cementitiuos
Ceiling tiles and materials as binders are utilised to make composite
panels panels, flooring tiles, roof sheating and weatherproof
Non acoustical uses Decorative wall and ceiling coatings [27].
coverings Philippines focused on the coconut coir, banana and
Acoustical uses Decorative sound-absorbing wall pineapple fibres with wood wastes for the particleboard
and ceiling coverings production [28].
Wall sheathing Wall sheathing in frame
Regular construction
Structural Wall sheathing in frame C. Europe
construction for exterior wall Due to lack of wood fibres and increased lumber
bracing prices, bagasse particleboards are attractive supplements
Backer board Behind exterior finish in wall fo wood fibres in Sweden. Hesch [29], a German
assemblies-no structural researcher has created straw composite panels and found
requirement that the panels have better properties compared to wood
Roof Deck Roof decking for flat, pitched, or composite panels. Tsolov [30] investigated a large
shed-type, open beamed, ceiling- number of agriculture waste fibres for fibreboards such as
roof construction beech fibres, hemp, tobacco, vines, cotton, raspberry,
maize and sunflower stalks.

VII. NATURAL FIBRES IN MALAYSIA

VI. GLOBAL FINDING IN NATURAL FIBRES Since Malaysia is the world’s leading producer of
palm oil, which is about 4.05 million hectares of oil palm
Recently natural fibre has become a trend in making produced over 16.8 million tonnes of crude palm oil
building material especially when there is a market for annually [31], the oil palm biomass which is categorised
greener products which is excellent in saving energy and as the wood origin of natural fibres becomes the most
also good for consumer wellbeing. This section will popular natural fibre investigated in Malaysia.
discuss on the use of this material from global The biomass from the palm oil include the oil palm
perspective. trunks (OPT) and fronds (OPF), kernel shell, empty fruit
bunch (EFB), oil palm shell (OPS), pressed fruit fibre
A. Americas (PFF) and palm oil mill effluent (POME). At present,
In Americas, the residue fibres from the sugar cane these products are not only underutilized but frequently
processing (bagasse) are much utilised. Bagasse available the causes of pollution as well [32].
all over North America is composed of pith and fibre The oil palm industry generates a lot of biomass in the
which is long (1 to 4 mm) and thick walled. Celotex built plantation which consists of a huge amount of
the first bagasse composition panels in 1920 [22].In 1958 lignocelluloses materials in the form of fronds, trunks,
in Venezuela, Tablopan de Venezuela produced a line of shell and empty fruit bunches which is shown in Figure 3.
bagasse fibreboards [22]. The bagasse fibre are used for
particleboards, fibreboards and composition panel
production in North America [4].
Bamboo and wood fibres have been used in
prefabricated panelised construction in Peru [23].Low
technology method has been used to produce the
prefabricated panels of bamboo and wood fibres. In
northwest region United States, wheat and ryegrass straw
fibres are utilised for the production of panels [24].
 Development on natural fibre based materials in Malaysia building industry: An overview

Figure 3: Total Utilisation of Oil Palm Biomass concern have triggered the search for new products and
processes that are environmental friendly.
The sheer volumes of these products and their This study also confirms that there are numerous
environmental friendliness cry for their use in economic papers from around the world discussing about the use of
products especially in building industry. In 2003, there are natural fibre for building material using their local fibre
about 410 oil palm mills with a total capacity of plant. In Malaysia most of the studies only concentrated
processing 82.56 million tonnes of fresh fruit bunches on producing EFB as MDF and pulp and paper products.
(FFB) and this is an increase of 13.1% from the previous This study will hopefully provide good base for
year [31]. Table 2 provides the availability of empty fruit future discussion about the appropriate use and evaluation
bunches for the next 20 years. It is predicted that average of the vegetables fibre as building materials especially in
of 2.856 million tonnes (dry basis) of EFB will be Malaysia. The unique balance of natural fibre properties
produced annually [33]. would open up new market development opportunities in
the green material world.
TABLE 2:
OIL PALM BIOMASS SUPPLY OUTLOOKS IN PENINSULAR
MALAYSIA BETWEEN 2007 AND 2020 [34].
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Trunks Prunned Empty Fruit
(million Fronds Bunches (EFB) The present paper is a part of a research project for PhD
Year tonnes / (million (million tonnes / and funded by Excellence Fund, UiTM. The author
year) tonnes / year ) gratefully acknowledges the assistance received from this
year) organisation for financial support. Acknowledgement to
2007 - the staff in Laboratory of MPOB Research Centre
3.23 6.89 2.82
2010 especially to QC Department for their support and
2011 – assistance.
4.28 6.8 2.83
2013
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Development on natural fibre based materials in Malaysia building industry: An overview