Structure of Bamboo Fiber for Textiles
Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2011 1:06 pm
I recently stumbled across a rather interesting article on bamboo fiber produced from Neosinocalamus affinis. There is a lot of good information on the natural production of fibers which some people have argued can't be produced from bamboo. One statement caught my eye:
Anyway, I have a copy of the article in pdf format and will email it to anyone who wants it.
There may be enough information in the article to make some bamboo fiber at home. A nice diagram shows the steps involved in making the fiber. The bamboo is split into strips, then there is an alkali degumming step using caustic soda. This is followed by an acid rinse in Glacial acetic acid and then water rinsing, dewatering, shaking drying and combing.At present, there are two ways to utilize bamboo in the textile industry in China [2]. One is to produce natural fiber from bamboo by chemical and physical treatment (this material is called bamboo fiber). Since a single bamboo fiber is 2 mm in length, it is usually in the form of a fiber bundle.In this paper, “bamboo fiber” means a fiber bundle. The other method is to spin the regenerated fiber after the bamboo is retted into bamboo pulp (this material is called bamboo pulp fiber). Since the latter has a similar processing method to viscose, the structures and the properties of bamboo pulp fiber could be predicted well.
Anyway, I have a copy of the article in pdf format and will email it to anyone who wants it.