Background of the Invention Currently, most of the fillings of furniture, mainly fillings of bed mattress or seats available in the local market are made of coconut twisted fibres. Most of these coconut twisted fibres are imported into the country and by importing, the additional costs incurred will be felt most by the end users.

Malaysia being the largest supplier of palm oil country in the world provides millions of tons of biomass such as trunks, fronds, empty fruit bunches etc annually. These biomass are classified as high-fibre-contained materials. Palm fibre is the material easily replaces coconut fibres in the future.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to utilize the palm fibre as raw material as it is easily available.

A further object of the present invention is to provide an effective and inexpensive method for producing a mainly palm-fibre-contained product such as fibre mat.

Summary of the Invention According to the present invention there is provided a method of producing fibre-mat from the biomass from oil palm waste material of oil palm such as empty fruit bunches and fronds, trunks the method comprising shredding of empty fruit bunches by a shredding machine, de- oiling and dewatering of shredded fibres by pressure press, drying said shredded fibres in a drying device, feeding said dried shredded fibres to a hopper, distributing said dried shredded

fibre onto a conveyor by a brush roller to form a continuous sheet of loose shredded fibres, and stitching said loose fibres together into a mat form.

The purpose of de-oiling and dewatering of the shredded fibres is to clean the fibres by removing the parenchymaous and other impurities contained in the fibres. This process involves pressing the shredded fibres by a hydraulic press at the pressure between 200 to 3000 pound per square inch. Then the cleaned shredded fibres are dried in an oven at the temperature about 90 to 125 degree Celsius for about 5 to 10 minutes until the moisture content of the fibre is below 15% and the oil content of the fibres is below 1%.

The fibre is then fed into a hopper, which is then supply fibres to a brush roller. The brush roller will distribute a consistent level of fibres to a conveyor, whereby the conveyor will go through a stitching machine of which the fibres are stitched into a mat form.

In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, the fibre mat is then sprayed by latex and subsequently dried in a roller oven at the temperature about 70 to 120 degree Celsius. The latex sprayed contains about 60% or less of dry rubber content. In another embodiment of the present invention, no latex is sprayed on the stitched fibre.

Eventually the fibre mat sheet is cut into various sizes or moulded into variety shapes according to demand.

Brief Description of The Drawings Figure 1 shows the process flow chart of producing a fibre mat sheet.

Detailed Description of Invention The fibre mat of the present invention is produced from the oil palm waste materials such as empty fruit bunches and fronds. The empty fruit bunches are first shredded (1) into fibres by using shredding machine. Upon completion of the shredding, the shredded fibres are cleaned by going through the de-oiling and dewatering process (2) by using a hydraulic press at the pressure between 200 to 3000 pound per square inch. Subsequently, the cleaned fibres will be dried (3) in a drying device such as rotary oven at the temperature about 90 to 180 degree

Celsius for about 5 to 10 minutes. After the cleaning and drying process, the moisture content is below 15% and oiil content of the fibres is below 1%.

Once the drying process is completed, the cleaned shredded fibres are fed into a hopper (4), which is then supply libres to a brush roller. In the action of rolling, the bristle of the brush roller will hook the cleaned shredded fibres and distribute (4) consistently to a conveyor to form a continuous slieet of loose fibres.

After this, the conveyor will go through a stitching machine (5) of which the loose fibres are stitched into mat form. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, after the stitching (5), the fibres are sprayed with a binding agent, preferably latex (6) for binding the fibres together. The amoumt of latex sprayed contains about 60% or less of dry rubber content. In another embodiment of the present invention, no latex is applied to the stitched fibre.

The fibre mat is then dried (7) by passing through a roller oven. The temperature of the oven is between about 70 to 120 degree Celsius. After this the fibre mat is cut into size and moulded (8) to various shapes according to demand.

These cut fibre mat sheet can be used as fillings such as for seats, or bed mattress. It can also be used for making doormats and mulch. Doormat is used to control soil erosion and sandstorm by placing these fibre mats on the ground whereas mulch may be used as an alternative fertilizer and earth cover by distributing it around the plant. On top of that, the fibre mats can be moulded into variety of shapes and sizes such as flowerpot.

While the invention has been described in connection with what is presently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the present invention is not limited to the disclosed embodiment, but on the contrary, is intended to cover various modification and equivalent arrangements as defined by the scope of the appended claims.