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Plant fibers have been used for making paper
and clothing for a long time and the need for use of natural fibres has
increased greatly. Among natural fibres, 90 per cent are of vegetable origin
and among them 80 per cent is constituted by cotton and the remaining by
other long vegetable fibres like flax, jute, hemp, sisal, ramie, coir, abaca,
banana and pineapple fibres.
Banana
The bananas or the plantains are essentially
hot climate plants. Their original home is said to be the tropical forests of
Asia.
All varieties of banana trees abound in
fibres. In fact almost each and every part of this plant gives fibres of
various strength, colour, beauty and staple length thus, can be used for
various purposes. In the leaf sheaths, coarse and strong fibres are found on
the outer ones, fine and silky in the inner most ones and those of the
middling quality in the intermediate ones. The core, from the roots to the
point of its emergence from the covering of the false stem contains an
extremely white fine fibre. The fruit stems contain fibres of a rough
variety, while the midribs of the leaves yield a fibre of exceptional
strength and durability when properly processed.
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Manufacture:
Fibre is extracted from the leaf sheath or
pseudostem of the banana plant by decortication of the sheath.
It can be extracted by hand scraping, by
retting, by using raspador machines; it can be extracted chemically, for
example by boiling in NaOH solution. Extraction of the fibre for local use
(in cordage) or for cottage industries in India has been through manual
means. The manual process is adopted in the Phillipines and is called
stripping. On the plantation site, the plant stems are desheathed, the
sheaths flattened, a knife inserted between the outer and middle layer, and a
50-80mm wide strip is separated and pulled off along the length. The strip is
called as a tuxy and the separation procedure is called tuxying .
Two methods of tuxying are employed in
Philippines. In the first method- Bacnis method, the trunks are pulled apart
and the sheath separated according to their position in stalk. They are then
flattened and the fibre is stripped from the stem by cutting the pulpy
portion and pulling away the tuxy. In second method , the tuxies are
pulled off the stalk from one sheath at a time. In either of these methods
tuxies are tied into bundles of 23 to 27 kg and brought to the stripping
knife for cleaning. In India,Dew retting and water retting are the methods
most commonly adopted.
After the harvesting of the fruits, the tree is cut as near to
the ground as possible. The foliage is removed by cutting away. Two or three
outer sheaths are removed and rejected. Inserting a knife lengthwise strips
of 7.5 cm or so in breath are prepared. These are scraped to yield strands
either manually or using a motorized spindle. A Raspodos machine can also be
used. The fibres contain acidic matter which is removed by hackling. The
hackle consists of steel needles mounted on a small board. This reduces the
strands into individual fibres. The fibres are then washed and rinsed in
clean water and spread out in the shade to dry. The second process to remove
the acids is to soak the strands in a well, tank or running water for a few
hours. The third process is to soak the strands in dilute alkali or soap
solution. The strands are then rinsed in cold water, wrung, rinsed and spread
out to dry. When semi dry they are hackled and the fibres are spread out to
dry in the shade.
Application:
The stronger fibres are ideal for cordages
while the weaker white inner fibres are best suited for value added fancy
items. They are being produced and exported in India from Kerala. The fibre
is suitable for manufacturing strings, ropes, cords, cables and ship building
thread. It can also be used to make sacks and packing fabrics as well as mats
and rugs.
Banana Fibre can be used as fibre to manufacture fabrics. It is
being used for making bags, table mats, ropes and twines. It can be blended
with cotton or viscose fibre to produce blended fabric. Since Banana fibre is
fully plant origin natural product, it has very good compatibility with other
natural fibres like cotton, Coir, Pineapple fibres and Jute in blending.
Banana fibre can also be dyed easily like other natural fibres and cloth made
from it can also be dyed and printed like cotton cloth. It has good strength
and has silk like luster. It can partly replace cotton fibre and hence we can
estimate potential for it on the line of estimating demand for cotton fibre.
It may be noted that good quality Banana fibre is having strength and luster
like silk and in the Philippines various garments are already manufactured
from Banana fibres. Apart from it, Philippines is exporting huge quantity of
ready-made garments like shirts, kimonos, gowns, nightwear etc.
The banana fibres were reported to be elegant and highly
versatile. As they do not crumple easily, these fibres have been used in the
manufacture of dress materials. The fineness of texture depends on the
quality of the fibre used. The material has a beautiful sheen and is used for
making wedding gowns and barongs.
Hand-extracted fibres have been used to
produce handbags, wall hangings, table mats and other fancy articles. The
fibre can be powdered and different colors of fibre obtained using natural
dyes, which can be made into beautiful pictures. Portraits drawn and filled
with colorful banana fibre chips have become popular in the handicraft
industry in Mizoram, India, and have good potential in the export
market.Thus, this fibre is having very good potential. It can be blended with
other natural fibres or synthetic fibres without any problem to produce large
varieties of garments from this fibre.
However, the inherent drawback of banana fibre
is its poor quality and higher irregularity, owing to the multi-cellular
nature of the fibres. The individual cells are cemented with lignin and
hemi-cellulose and thus form a composite fibre. Banana fibre is classified as
medium quality fibre and performs very well in combination with other fibres
for making fine articles like handicrafts, currency, etc.
Reference:
1.
G.K.Ghosh, Non Conventional Textiles in India, APH Publishing
Corporation, 2000, p 89 99.
2. J.Gordon
Cook, Handbook of Textile Fibres, Vol I Natural Fibres, Woodhead Publishing
Limited, 2001, p 27.
3. Fibre
plants for making paper, A. Balasubramanian and ShyamalaKanakarajan, The
Hindu.
4. MenachemLewin,
Handbook of Fiber Chemistry, Marcel Dekker Inc., 2nd Edition,
p 508 519.
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