Retting process of some bast plant fibers and its effect on fibre quality: A review

By Md Tahir Paridah, A. Basher, S. SaifulAzry, Z. Ahmed. BioResources, 2011

342 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Retting is the main challenge faced during the processing of bast plants for the production of long fibre. The traditional methods for separating the long bast fibres are by dew and water retting. Both methods require 14 to 28 days to degrade the pectic materials, hemicellulose, and lignin. Even though the fibres produced from water retting can be of high quality, the long duration and polluted water have made this method less attractive. A number of other alternative methods such as mechanical decortication, chemical, heat, and enzymatic treatments have been reported for this purpose with mixed findings. This paper reviews different types of retting processes used for bast plants such as hemp, jute, flax, and kenaf, with an emphasis on kenaf. Amongst the bast fibre crops, kenaf apparently has some advantages such as lower cost of production, higher fibre yields, and greater flexibility as an agricultural resource, over the other bast fibres. The fibres produced from kenaf using chemical retting processes are much cleaner but low in tensile strength. Enzymatic retting has apparent advantages over other retting processes by having significantly shorter retting time and acceptable quality fibres, but it is quite expensive.

Subfields: Biomaterials, Mechanical Engineering, Polymers and Plastics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b3e14e46d337052958f7f819b6c1c40da1ac6979

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Citations in the corpus

Hydrophobic treatment of natural fibers and their composites—A review (2018, background): “The four broad categories of retting involve the chemical, biological, mechanical, and physical fiber separation process [28].”
A comprehensive review of techniques for natural fibers as reinforcement in composites: Preparation, processing and characterization. (2019, background): “The reaction time must be carefully evaluated when using dew or water retting because excessive retting can cause difficulties for the separation of individual fibers or may weaken the fiber strength (Manimaran et al., 2018a; Paridah et al., 2011).”
Effect of harvest time and field retting duration on the chemical composition, morphology and mechanical properties of hemp fibers (2015, neutral): “However, those methods require high energy input or expensive enzymes and/or may generate costly wastes (Tahir et al., 2011).”