Morphological, mechanical, and color strength properties of infrared dyed pineapple leaf fibers

Abstract

The enormous number of pineapple plantations in Malaysia are dominated by small to large agronomists governed by the Malaysian Pineapple Industrial Board, which addresses almost all pineapple industry-related issues. In Malaysia, more than 147,000 hectares of land are utilized for pineapple plantations, which create 65 tons of residue per hectare. Consequently, the waste production comes from the long leaves of the harvested mother plants of pineapples that are cut off to allow the young sucker to grow freely, which then can be found abundantly. However, the handling practice for pineapple leaf waste in Malaysia is still poorly managed. Realizing the importance of this issue, as an alternative to reduce waste, fibers from pineapple leaves were extracted and dyed to improve the aesthetic value and marketability of pineapple leaf fiber by adding dyeing substrates using a low energy consumption dyeing approach. Two different techniques of dyeing were used to investigate the morphological, mechanical, color strength, and colorfastness properties of dyed pineapple leaf fibers. The dyeing of pineapple leaf fibers was investigated using C.I. reactive blue 5, C.I reactive red 11, and C.I Reactive yellow 86 at different concentrations. As a result, the characterization of dyed pineapple leaf fiber (PALF) showed that the dyeing process modified the original structure of PALF but no significant differences were observed on dyed PALF in the comparison of each dyeing technique. In addition, under optimized conditions of two dyeing techniques dyed PALF presented lower breaking strength, whereas comparable breaking strength value was gained with each technique. Fibers of both dyeing techniques displayed interesting color findings with excellent colorfastness to washing, lightfastness, and good colorfastness to perspiration. The infrared dyeing method resulted in similar and better dyeing behavior compared to exhaustion dyeing techniques. This method could further be refined by considering the production of textile materials, which can provide alternative to the usage of highly expensive silk fibers in the songket making industry.