Potential and characteristics of oil palm trunk as material in oriented strand board for structural application

There are many oil palm trunks (OPT) from the cycle of oil palm plantation cultivation at field, and this can be extended to the production of value-added products, where wood composite products are the earliest and most immediate product. However, the nature of the OPT structure is physicochemical and unique but not competent for use in wood applications. This may be due to the limitation of utilization OPT in composite material. However, in improving the properties of OPT can be done in many studies and one of these studies through the compression process. In this review, the properties of OPT were analyzed to the production of oriented strand board (OSB) process. The rapid development of research in developing and creating OSB with broader applications, higher usability and marketability and is essential to being environmentally friendly. OSB manufacturing can be generated from unused resources such as factory residues or small logs. The production of OSB from the OPT may be helpful in the production of material for structural applications. Malaysia expectations, by converting OPT to the wood-based panel (OSB), together will reduce the OPT waste and cut the timber demand. This review article covers the potential to utilize OPT biomass as OSB as wood composite panel products to replace non-wood panel products for the structural application. The investigation of this study is to find alternative materials to produce OSB from OPT, which is well-thought-out to be a biomass waste product. It also covers anatomical, mechanical and physical characteristics of OPT and how to produce OSB to improve its strength and dimensional stability.