Study on the benefits of using the date palm trees residuals in Saudi Arabia for development of the non-traditional wooden industry

The average world consumption of wood is about 22million tones/year (Faostat,2013), representing about 50% of the total world raw materials, which represents great challenge to find out alternative sources, and the agricultural residues can share strongly in this field. Important interest was paid to the palm trees residues, such as the “date palm leaves midrib” (DPLM), leaflets, coir and spadix stems, as DPLM after drying, which can be used as an industrial substitute of raw wooden materials particularly for the manufacture of particle boards. The Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia has the date palm trees as the third place in the world after Iran and Iraq, while Islamic and Arabic countries represent more than 92% of the world date palms. Local date palms increased from 17.5 million in 1995 to about 32 million in 2014, which may save about 15% of KSA wood imports (2.5 million tons costing about 5730 SR millions, saving about SR million 855/year according to 2014 prices), with 10 pruned &dried DPLMs /tree/year, if it is used only for particle board manufacture. The study includes a survey of the KSA wood imports; the dominant species of palms and their numbers, meteorological conditions, evaluation of DPLM drying rate in open air under the effect of solar radiation, achieving final moisture content of 8-12% in about 4 weeks. Also measurements of the mechanical properties of the dried Saudi DPLM samples approved the excellent mechanical properties as well as Beech and Spruce woods.