干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

The success of the environmental movements world-wide has led to the decrease of wood availability in the world market, and hence to the soaring of wood prices .This in turn has led to the increase of the burden on the balance of payment of the Arab countries, relying on the importation of wood to satisfy the needs of their populations in shelter, furniture, etc. Meanwhile, the Arab World includes the palm belt extending from Morocco in the far West to Iraq in the Far East. Therefore, it makes sense to look to the date palm residues, mainly resulting from the palm pruning, as a sustainable renewable material base to locally manufacture wood substitutes as, for the example, the composite panels including the medium density fiber boards (MDF), particle boards, block boards, etc. Within a research project, conducted by the Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University with the collaboration of the ministry of environment, samples of the date palm secondary products have been collected in proportion with the available products of palm pruning (palm midribs, leaflets, spadix stems and coir), threshed and sent to the laboratory of Deshna MDF factory in Kena governorate.The result of tests confirm that the MDF samples, manufactured from the date palm secondary products, satisfy the mechanical and physical requirements of international standards of MDF. A technical and economic feasibility study has been conducted on a suggested industrial project to manufacture MDF boards in EL-Bahariah oases. The results of this study show that the profitability indicators of this project are high: the return rate on invested capital is (39.4%), the revenue to cost rate is (1.43:1), the payback period is 3.6 years and the internal rate of return is 36.2%.