Future Prospect for Sustainable Luxury Textiles from Pineapple Leaf Fibre - An Agro Waste

Volume 1 - Issue 2

Syamal Kumar Dey*

Received: January 19, 2018;   Published: January 24, 2018

DOI: 10.32474/LTTFD.2018.01.000108

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Abstract

The treasure of Major natural fibres belongs to cotton, jute, wool, silk, flax, sisal and Manila hemp which are extensively used across the globe. Besides, a large number of fibres grown in lesser quantities throughout the world have local economic importance and are consumed locally. Utilization of underexploited, unexplored natural fibres from crop waste are not only critical issues in the international scenario but are also the need of the hour in developing countries like India to search out a suitable avenue for which separate spinning system is not widely available or established. Pine apple leaf fibre successfully tested as a base material for conveyor belts in the early eighties, could well have been the magic yarn of the day. Pineapple leaf fibre extracted from the green pineapple leaf, an agro waste reveals its immense potentiality in the field of textiles particularly due to the disposal problem after harvesting for cleaner and green environment.

PALF is well known for its silky lustre which possesses some advantageous physical and chemical properties like high tensile strength, dimensional stability, considerable resistance to heat and fire, and good dyeability while the demerits are coarseness, inextensibility. Besides, it is a low cost renewable resource and eco-friendly material. If the apparent demerits can be masked, a diverse range of products can be developed by exploiting the intrinsic properties of PALF. One of the ways of masking is blending of PALF with natural and synthetic fibres. It is felt that such binary blending will help development of textiles with better functional properties by combining positive features of the constituent fibres. Therefore, binary blending will give a wider application for production of value added diversified products which are the need of the hour.

The paper also delineates suitable processing technique for blending of PALF with different natural and synthetic fibres for conversion into textiles using existing fibre processing system since there is no specialized spinning system available for pineapple and their possible commercial utilization. The PALF blended yarn has a bright future prospect for sustainable luxury textiles like fancy apparel products (Figure 1).

Abstract| Introduction| Different Stages of Blending Process| Conclusion|