Natural fibers extractives

Extraction methods, amounts, and lengths of various natural fibers and their physical and chemical properties are given in Tables 2 and 3. 

Table 2 Extraction Methods, Amount, and Length of Various Natural Fibers...

Natural enemy preservation, in integrated pest management, 14 351 Natural extracts, as food additives, 12 46 Natural fibers, 11 164, 285 24 613, 615-616... 

There has always been an abundance of natural fibers and elastomers, but few plastics. Of course, early humans employed a crude plastic art in tanning the protein in animal skins to make leather and in heat-formed tortoise shells. They also used naturally occurring tars as caulking materials and extracted shellac from the excrement of small coccid insects Coccus laced). 

Diethylene glycol (HOCH2CH2OCH2CH2OH), is used in the production of unsaturated polyester resins and polyester polyols for polyurethane-resin manufacture, as well as in the textile industry as a conditioning agent and lubricant for numerous synthetic and natural fibers. It is also used as an extraction solvent in petroleum processing, as a desiccant in natural gas processing, and in the manufacture of some plasticizers and surfactants. 

Jute is produced from plants of the genus Corchorus, which includes about 100 species. It is one of the cheapest natural fibers and is currently the bast fiber with the highest production volume. The fibers are extracted from the ribbon of the stem. Among all natural fibers, jute fibers are easily available in fabric and fiber... 

Abstract Pineapple leaf fibers (PALF) have long been known as textile materials in many countries. Despite being mechanically excellent and environmentally sound, PALF are the least-studied natural fibers, especially for reinforcing composites. This article presents a survey of research works carried out on PALF and PALF-reinforced composites. It reviews PALF extraction, fiber characterization, and PALF applications, modification of PALF, and manufacture and properties of PALF-reinforced composites. With increasing importance of pineapple and pineapple plantation area, value-added applications of PALF as reinforcing fibers in polymer composites must be developed in order to increase resource potential of pineapple and consequently energize the utilization of PALF. 

The properties of a composite are dictated by the intrinsic properties of the constituents which may be summarized as fiber architecture and fiber-matrix interface (Fowler et al. 2006). The reinforcing efficiency of natural fibers depends on their physical, chemical, and mechanical properties. Major shortcomings of natural plant fibers include fiber nonuniformity, property variation even between individual plants, low degradation temperature, low microbial resistance, and susceptibility to rotting. In addition to naturally occurring nonuniformity, fiber extraction and processing techniques also have major impacts on final fiber quality, not to mention fiber costs and yield (Munder et al. 2005). 

Like other natural fibers, PALF vary in their properties according to species, geographical regions, age, locations in each plant, and weather conditions among others (Bismarck et al. 2005). There are many different species under the genus of A. comosus, while in the works on PALF and PALF-reinforced polymer composites reviewed, specific species of pineapple from which PALF were extracted were barely mentioned. Only in Bhaduri et al. (1983) the chemical compositions... 

Curaua is a lignocellulosic fiber extracted from the plant Ananus erectfilius. The plants leaves are hard, straight, and have flat surfaces. The leaves are 4—5 cm wide and about 1 m long. It is one of the important natural fibers. 

The utilization of enzymes in the natural fiber modification field is rapidly increasing. This trend may be due to the environmentally-friendly nature of enzyme treatments as the catalyzed reactions are very specific and the performance is very focused [3]. Several enzymes have been used in order to enhance the effectiveness of extracting fibers from the agro-residue or fine-tune the properties of extracted fibers such as lowering their diameter. Xylanases, cellulases, pectinases are the enzyme types that have found more use in agro-residual fiber modification [12,13,38]. 

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