Investigate coir fibers’ properties produced by coconut fiber extracting machine in Ben Tre and research the treatment for fiber with NaOH solution

Abstract

Over past few years, the polymer composite materials based on coir fibers have grown rapidly and have even found new markets as well as many research projects due to its cost effect and environmentally-friendly manner. In Vietnam, the coir fibers have a good quality, especially in Ben Tre province. In this research, we investigated the size of coir fibers which was produced from dried nuts stripped via hand-made coir fiber extracting machine. The coir fibers with the largest diameter distribution have evaluated the average tensile strength. In the other hand, the coir fibers have treated via a sodium hydroxide solution process to obtained refine-coir fibers which were following investigated the mechanical testing based on composite materials of polyester resin. The results showed that the treatment of the sodium hydroxide solution process causes a decrease of coir fiber average diameter. Increasing the temperature and concentration of sodium hydroxide solution leads to the decreasing of coir fiber average diameter. Moreover, the optimum condition (5% of NaOH, 50oC) enhanced the tensile strength of fibers reaching to 40% comparing with those untreated fibers.