Investigation of suitable methods to extract the fibres and optimization of treatment methods for sri lankan banana cultivars for textile material

Abstract

The banana pseudostem is an ideal source of natural cellulose substitute fibre. This thesis investigates the effects of banana fibre extraction and treatment parameters on fibre fineness, and establishes suitable methods to reduce the fineness that enable the usage of banana fibres as textile materials. Ten popular Sri Lankan varieties of banana pseudostem were selected for this study. Among the fibre fineness of the mechanically extracted banana fibre of the ten varieties, Ambun (genome AAA) middle layers of the pesudostem was selected for further analysis since it gives the lowest fineness. Enzyme and chemical treatments was ministered to the mechanically extracted fibre of the middle layers of the pseudostem. The diameter of the scanning electron microscope and fibre linear density were used to observe and determine the fineness of the biologically and chemically extracted fibres and enzymes from the chemically treated banana fibres. This demonstrated that fibres treated with a combination of enzymes and chemicals to be the finest. Furthermore, it was discovered that due to this combined treatment of enzymes and chemicals (5% Enzyme and 6% H2O2, 2% Na2SiO3, 3% NaOH) treated banana fibres achieved fibre linear density of 4 tex. The diameter of the fibre was reduced from 168.4μm to 48.8μm, which is a 71% reduction compared to the diameter of the mechanically extracted fibre. All the experiments conducted on the reflectance curves of dyed banana fibres found that the dye absorption tendency of pre-treated banana fibres and it’s dyeing behaviours to be similar to that of cotton. This leads the current study to posit that the process of dyeing cotton can be used to dye banana fibres as well. The outcome of this research is to help those working in the apparel industry to select Sri Lankan banana fibres based on strength and finesse suitable for their textile products.