Effect of melamine urea formaldehyde on the mechanical and physical properties of the jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) rind paper / Nur Athirah Mohd Khalid

There are some environment problems that faced when producing the paper from the trees such as deforestation, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and disposal of animal habitats. The jackfruit peels (JFP) can be used to make a paper and it can reduce the problems of waste disposal since the peels is solid waste. The jackfruit rind paper has weak wet strength which tends to breakage. Hence, melamine urea formaldehyde (MUF) resins were added to the papermaking process due to its good properties that can stand with the pressure. The objectives of this project are to fabricate the paper from jackfruit rind and to study the effect of MUF on the physical and mechanical properties of jackfruit rind paper. The method in papermaking process was started with the preparation of raw material, soda pulping, screening, bleaching, and lastly is papermaking process. From this project, it hopes that the expected outputs that will be produced are satisfying where the paper have good strength properties to stand with pressure. Besides, it can protect the environment since no more trees to be cut to make a paper. The significance of these outputs gives more benefits to the environment, community and industry. The environment and community will be safe from the pollution and global warming. Since JFP was used to make a paper, the jackfruit industry will expected to increase because of its widely use in the market. As the results, the jackfruit rind paper that was produced has strong wet strength when the MUF increase. The dry strength, strain and tensile energy absorption (TEA) increase as the pulp was increase. While tearing and bursting index decrease by applying resins. For the color, even the amount of MUF used is different, it do not affect the color of paper which all the paper have same color of light yellow. The size of fiber was measured which the length, diameter of fiber and diameter of lumen have value between 1.0 mm to 1.09 mm, 11.3 μm to 18.7 μm and 6.6 μm to 11.9 μm respectively. The porosity size for 0 %, 2.5 % and 5% of MUF have values between 11.86 μm to 35.69 μm, 28.66 μm to 36.37 μm and 27.83 μm to 39.68 μm respectively which it has smaller size of porosity compared with filter paper that has porosity size between 28.69 μm to 81.06 μm.