Polyurethane Foams Made from Liquefied Oil Palm Mesocarp Fibre and Epoxy

Biopolyols have been synthesized from oil palm mesocarp fibre (PM) by liquefaction conversion method and incorporated with commercial epoxy polyol to produce flexible polyurethane foam. Liquefaction of PM was studied using polyhydric alcohol (PA) which is PEG-400 as liquefaction solvents in conventional glass flask. Preparation of polyurethane foams using bioplyol, epoxy and methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) was also studied. Water was used as a blowing agent. The factors that influence the cell sturucture of foams such as mass ratio of biopolyol to epoxy, catalyst and surfactant were studied. PU foams produced under preferential conditions showed densities from 0.032 to 0.040 g/cm³ and compressive strength from 0.20 to 0.31 MPa. The synthesized PU foams were characterized by fourier transform infrared (FTIR) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). FTIR revealed that biopolyol and epoxy polyol was suitable for production of industrial foams with lower cost.