Extraction, Treatment and Characterization of Banana Pseudo-Stem Fibers as Potential Utility in Textile Industry

Aimable Rukundo, Peter Michael Dass and I.I Nkafamiya

Moddibo Adama University, Yola.

Corresponding author email: aimable.rukundo@aun.edu.ng , Phone number: +2347065590846

ABSTRACT

Extraction, treatment and characterization of banana pseudo stem fibres was achieved. The study revealed that water retting is the best way to extract fibers, however the gummy materials bending fibres together must be weakened by boiling the fibres rich material prior to retting where the fibres were able to be extracted at 14^th day of retting. The fibers were treated using NaOH for scouring while bleaching was carried out using H₂O₂. The treatment of fibers was conducted to get rid of fat, wax and other impurities as well as undesired colors bonded to fibers that could not be removed through water retting. The best scouring concentration of NaOH was found to be 17.5 % while the best bleaching concentration of H₂O₂ was found to be 2 %. More so, FTIR was carried out for both treated and untreated fibers and it was shown that wax, fat and other impurities can be removed by fibres’ scouring and bleaching. This was further confirmed by the use of Soxhlet to extract ethanol-benzene extract from both treated and untreated fibres, where untreated fibres showed a considerable weight loss while the treated fibers did not show any weight loss. Thereafter, mercerization was carried out and it was found out that the best mercerization concentration of NaOH is 15%. Furthermore, the quantitative analysis of the banana pseudo-stem fibers revealed that the fibers have, ethanol-benzene extractives of 4.2 %, pectin content of 3.07%, Lignin content of 18%, cellulose content of 68.3% and ash content of 4.2 %. The fibers showed a water, oil and vapor absorption of 71%,59 % and 8% respectively. Also, the thermal analysis showed that the degradation temperature is 370 ⁰C while the fibers started to display thermal instability at 290 ⁰C. Moreover, SEM and XRD analysis showed that the treatment of fibres participated in removal of wax and oil as well as other gummy materials, which also is in line with FTIR results obtained.

Keywords: Extraction, Banana Pseudo-stem Fibers, Scouring, Bleaching, Mercerization, Characterization, Textile

CITE AS: Aimable Rukundo, Peter Michael Dass and I.I Nkafamiya (2024). Extraction, Treatment and Characterization of Banana Pseudo-Stem Fibers as Potential Utility in Textile Industry. IDOSR JOURNAL OF BIOCHEMISTRY, BIOTECHNOLOGY AND ALLIED FIELDS 9(1):23-39. https://doi.org/10.59298/IDOSR/JBBAF/24/91.2339