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Abstract
A range of differently processed cellulosic fibers from flax and hemp plants were investigated to study the relation between processing of cellulosic fibers and fiber bundle strength. The studied processing methods are applied for yarn production and include retting, scutching, carding, and cottonization. There was a monotonically decreasing relationship between the strength and the number of processing steps, which was well fitted by an exponential regression line. The reduction factor was determined to be 0.27, indicating that the fiber bundle strength was on average reduced by 27% per processing step at the applied conditions. No large changes in cellulose content and crystallinity were observed, so the reduction in strength must be explained by other changes in the fiber ultrastructure. Altogether, the study presents a quantitative basis for reduction in strength of cellulosic fibers due to processing.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors wish to thank Prof. Claus Felby (Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen) for usage of the equipment for fiber bundle tests, and Dr. Kenny Ståhl (Department of Chemistry, Technical University of Denmark) for usage of X-ray diffraction facilities for crystallinity determinations. Technical support is acknowledged to Tomas Fernqvist and Lise Lotte Berring at the Technical University of Denmark. The EU commission is acknowledged for supporting the BIOCOMP project (EU 6th Framework Programme, IP No. 515769: “New Classes of Engineering Composite Materials from Renewable Resources”).