Biodegradable materials from combination of egg tray, oil palm empty fruit fiber and paddy straw as sound absorber

Noise is referred as unwanted sound, that is among the most pervasive pollutants today. Ambient noise could be reduced by using acoustic absorbers. The conventional acoustic absorbers are made from synthetic materials which might contribute to global warming and pollutions during its production. Biodegradable materials such as oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) fiber, paddy straw and egg tray are easily obtained locally. In this study, sound absorption performance of these materials were investigated. Impedance tube and sound reverberation room tests were carried out in this study. In the experimental work for impedance test, at 4000Hz frequency, the combination of paddy straw and egg tray was proved to be a good sound absorber with sound absorption coefficient of 0.97 compared to combination of oil palm empty fruit bunch fiber and egg tray at 0.93. For sound reverberation room, the maximum time value for the room without acoustic panel were 8.01s and 7.05s for microphone 1 and 2, respectively. The maximum time value for egg trays with paddy straw and OPEFB fiber with egg trays for microphone 1 were 4.09s and 4.75s, respectively. For microphone 2, the maximum value for egg trays with paddy straw was 3.52s and egg trays with OPEFB fiber was 3.51s. The experiments that has been carried out showed that egg trays and natural fibers could be a good alternative in replacing synthetic fibers that currently widely used.