Source: Textile Review


'Natural Fibres and their TechnicalApplications: Research in IIT Delhi'


Natural fibres present important advantages such as lowdensity, appropriate stiffness and mechanical properties and high disposabilityand renewability. Moreover, they are recyclable and biodegradable. There hasbeen lot of research on use of natural fibres in reinforcements. With theincreased consciousness on environmental problems and the demand of environment-friendlyfabric, natural fibres have received a great deal of attention.


Automobile giant DaimlerChrysler has been using natural fibres with extremely high tensile strength from the abaca banana plant in the standard underbody cover for the spare-wheel compartment of the 3-door version of the Mercedes-Benz A-Class model. They have also been using natural fibres such as flax, hemp, sisal and coconut in the interior of Mercedes-Benz passenger cars and commercial vehicles for many years.


Natural fibres can be used as various products and can becombined with synthetic (thermoplastic and thermosetting polymers) or naturalmaterials like PLA (Biocomposites) for various applications. In the pastdecade, natural fibre composites have been developed, in which several naturalfibres such as ramie, hemp, jute, sisal, bamboo, banana, oil palm fibres, etc.are used as reinforcements in place of glass fibres.


Life cycle environmental performance of natural fibre compositescompared with glass fibre reinforced composites show that the former areenvironmentally superior in some specific applications for the followingreasons: (1) natural fibre production results in lower environmental impactscompared to glass fibre production; (2) Natural fiber reinforced (NFR) compositeshave higher fibre content for equivalent performance, which reduces the amount ofmore polluting base polymers; (3) lower weight of NFR composites improves fuel efficiencyand reduces emissions during the use phase of the component, especially in autoapplications; and (4) end of life incineration of natural fibres results inenergy and carbon credits.



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Aboutthe Author


The authoris associated with the Department of Textile Technology, lIT Delhi



Originallypublished in TextileReview; June 2009- Vol 4- Issue-6