Abstract
Ramie ( Boehmeria nivea L.), a perennial herb, is an important bast fiber plant. Its fiber with the advantages of attractive luster, high tenacity, enhanced strength, and good microbial resistivity is well known as the queen of natural fibers. The abundant cellulose fibers in ramie raw materials are stuck tightly by gums consisting of pectic substances, hemicelluloses, and little lignin. The gum should remove from the ramie raw material through degumming process to separate fibers, unveil unique fiber properties, and improve fiber-spinning ability to fulfill textile requirements. Low degumming efficiency and high environmental pollution are the major problems hindering the utilization of ramie fibers. Ramie degumming involves the degradation of pectin and hemicelluloses, which requires chemical, physical, biological treatment, or a combination of several treatments. No stereotyped parameters of the given degumming method have been yet established for the extraction of textile-grade ramie fibers. This review evaluated integrated methodology involving chemical, physical, biological and biochemical methods to degum raw ramie and obtain textile-grade refined fibers.
Highlights
Ramie is an important fiber crop used in textile processing
Microstructure, and mechanical property analyses revealed that ramie fibers subjected to steam explosion treatment coupled with 2Na2CO3·3H2O2 soaking degumming process have a residual gum content of less than 5%, fineness of more than 1600 N m, whiteness of more than 50%, and breaking tenacity of 5.4 cN/ dex, all of which meet the Chinese national standard of the degummed ramie fiber (GB/T 20793-2006)
The residual gum rate of the fibers further reduced to 9.4% by enzymatic treatment, so it identified that pectate lyase (Pel) and xylanase play a vital role in the gum removal of ramie.[42]
Summary
Ramie is an important fiber crop used in textile processing. Planters harvest ramie approximately every 60 days by cutting mature bast and protect roots. It is proved that Fenton’s reagent is a new oxidizing agent to degum ramie material, and this oxidation degumming process is performed under weak acid condition, resulting in good degumming effect.[22] Compared with the alkaline oxidation degumming method, the new degumming method using Fenton’s reagent can reduce the gum residual rate of ramie raw material and further improve the cellulose content of treated ramie fibers.
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