Production of polymer composite board from pistachio shell and improvements of its features

Forests in the world are destroyed by human in order to use wood asfurniture, wooden and construction material. So, the purpose was tominimize the damage that given to the environment by responding thenecessity of this material by using pistachio shell that is garbage.Aim of this study was to obtain environment friendly constructionmaterial using pistachio shells and fly ash to use in variousapplications. While urea-formaldehyde and phenol-formaldehyde wereused as the binding chemicals, as fly ash was used as a flame retarder.At the other hand, phenol-formaldehyde was also used to minimize thewater absorption.First of all, the polymer composite boards were obtained by mixingbreaked pistachio shells -seperated by particle sizes- with urea-formaldehyde at different ratios. Then the boards were made to wait inthe drying oven for 24 hour to prepare samples and bending strengthtest was done from three different points to the samples prepared.Highest bending strength was determined as 1,45 N/mm2 with the 50%urea-formaldehyde binder. Experiments were continued with urea-formaldeyhde at the observed optimal value (50%) and 60g fillingmaterial. Boards with different ratios were prepeared to obtain fly ash?soptimal value and 10% was observed as optimal value. Fenol-formaldeyhde was used to reduce water absorption capacity. Lowestwater absorption level was determined as 0,047 g-water/g-materialusing fenol-formaldeyhde at optimum value %60.