Development of ceiling board using breadfruit seed coat and recycled low density polyethylene

Conversion of agro wastes into potential raw materials for production has gained a lot of attention in research. This has led to the development of ceiling board using waste breadfruit seed coat and Recycled Low Density Polyethylene, as filler and binder respectively. The filler material (Breadfruit seed coat), was treated with 1 mol/dm(3) of NaOH to eliminate the pigment and neutralized using 0.5 mol/dm(3) Acetic Acid. After drying, the filler material was ground to a particle size of 600μm. Using Central Composite Design (CCD) tool of the Design Expert software, the experimental design was set up. From the design, thirty experimental samples were developed with the production parameters; press time, press pressure, press temperature and filler/rLDPE ratio as the independent variables. The produced samples were tested for Thermal Conductivity, Water Absorption, Thickness Swell and Density tests, which formed the responses for the Central Composite Design. The results of the experiment were analysed using the Response Surface Methodology while the validation was done using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The optimal values obtained for the production parameters are 19.722% filer/rLDPE, 10minutes press time, 197.31 °C press temperature and 9.042MPa press pressure, which gave a 775.661 g/cm(3) density, 0.308% Water Absorption, 0.962% Thickness Swell and 0.367W/M.K Thermal Conductivity. This result shows that agro waste breadfruit seed coat is a good filler material for the production of ceiling board.