Abstract
Environmental awareness and depletion of the wood resources are among vital factors that motivate various researchers to explore the potential of agrobased crops as an alternative source of fiber material in paper industries such as writing, printing, wrapping, and packaging. Fibers from agro-based crops are available in abundance, low cost, and most importantly its biodegradability features, which sometimes referred as “ecofriendly” materials. This paper attempt to study the effect of mercerization treatment on the structural and morphological properties of pineapple leaf fiber (PALF) pulp. It was shown that the PALF pulp achieved favourable structural and morphological properties as characterized by FTIR spectroscopy, X-ray diffractometer and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The mercerized fibers (15% NaOH) achieved the best tensile properties compared to that of pristine fibers.This modification have the potential to be utilized as pulp for paper based products.
Highlights
Present-day, the center of research in the field of paper science and technology has been aimed on developing papers for writing, printing, wrapping, packaging, and many other paper products from renewable resources, mostly the abundantly available agro-waste and lignocellulosic materials
The enhancement is presumably related to a better efficiency improvement in interfacial properties of the mercerized pineapple leaf fiber (PALF) as revealed by the scanning electron micrographs (Fig. 4).The strength of the mercerized PALF specimens treated at 20% NaOH concentration, reduced tremendously compared to un-mercerized PALF
On the other hand, mercerized PALF specimens treated with NaOH concentrations below 20% seemed to retain its mechanical integrity
Summary
Present-day, the center of research in the field of paper science and technology has been aimed on developing papers for writing, printing, wrapping, packaging, and many other paper products from renewable resources, mostly the abundantly available agro-waste and lignocellulosic materials. A vast number agro-waste and lignocellulosic materials that have both economic and environmental benefits are being considered for application in pulp and paper industries. Growing environmental awareness and depletion of the wood resources worldwide are among the vital factors that motivated academia to explore the potential of agro-waste crops and lignocellulosic materials as the alternative source of fiber material in pulp and paper industries. The availability of abundantly inexpensive lignocellulosic natural fibers, such as pineapple leaf fiber (PALF) in tropical countries, such as Malaysia, provides a unique opportunity of exploring the possibility of its utilization as an inexpensive raw material for pulp and paper applications. PALF are known to have excellent specific properties as mentioned before, majority of these pineapple leaves are still going to waste because of lack of knowledge about their economic applications. The structural and morphological of the prepared PALF pulps were examined by using scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction
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