Binderless fiberboard from steam exploded banana bunch

Musacea bunch was pretreated and used to produce fiberboard with non-synthetic binders. The lignocellulosic material was steam exploded with a thermomechanical aqueous vapor process in a batch reactor. The effect of the pretreatment and the pressure conditions on the physical–mechanical responses of the fiberboard was evaluated and the conditions maximizing the responses were found. Response surface methodology with a central composite design was used. The variables studied and their respective variation ranges were: pretreatment severity, 3.16–4.84; pressing temperature, 133–217 °C; pressing pressure, 3.95–14.04 MPa. The fiberboards obtained were good quality and satisfied the requirements of the relevant standard specifications. The effect of the pretreatment severity on the lignin, cellulose and xylans content was also determined by an analysis of variance. The decrease in xylans was clearly related to the increase in the dimensional stability of the fiberboards.