The Effects of Water Content towards the Packaging Properties of Paper Made from Coconut Coir

Abstract

This research is about an attempt to evaluate the effect of water contents towards the packaging properties of paper made from coconut coir, which was being processed manually through beating times method. The purpose of this investigation is to relate the composition of coconut fibre and water content with the tensile strength and tear factor. The composition starts from sample A, which has 90% of water and 10% of coconut fibre. The sample continues with 10% decreasing content of water and 10% increment of coconut coir. Base on tensile test and tear test results, graphs were plotted and it shows sample D, with 60% of water and 40% of coconut coir has produced the highest tensile strength, breaking length and tensile index, with the value of 1020.6 N/m, 422.8 m and 4.1450 Nm/g respectively. On the other hand, sample A produced the highest tear factor, with the value of 92.7 g/mm2. As a conclusion, these packaging properties are good enough to become guidance in paper manufacturing industry, as well as to support the application of coconut coir fibre as an alternative packaging material in the future.

Optimization of Alkali Treatment Condition on Tensile Properties of Kenaf Reinforced Polyester Composite Using Response Surface Method

“…The tensile strength of fiber composite measured by using Universal Testing Machine GT-7001-LS10 from the ASTM D638 standard. The examples are cut into a 'dogbone' shape and twenty (20) examples are tested with the crosshead speed of 2 m/s at room temperature condition.…”

“…However, there was no investigation had been carried out about the effect of bamboo fibre treatment towards this blend. As for another research about using coconut coir as the packaging material [19][20], the effect of fibre treatment towards the properties of the packaging material should be beneficial and recommended. Furthermore, instead of tensile strength, other mechanical behavior such as fracture mechanism could be carried out to reveal the toughening condition before and after the alkali treatment…”