Effect of Enzymatic Retting Conditions on the Diameter and Mechanical Properties of Flax Fibers

Abstract

The current industrial method of extracting natural plant fibers, originally intended for their textile use, can degrade the inherent mechanical properties, making them difficult to replace e-glass fibers for reinforcement in polymer composites. Microorganisms during the initial dew/field retting step of fiber extraction process not only degrades the fiber-stem interphase bond constituting primarily pectin and lignin, but also degrades the structural components of the fiber such as cellulose, resulting in non-uniform technical fibers with poor mechanical properties. Also, current single fiber testing standards used for mechanical properties characterization of these fibers are suitable for assessing homogenous and uniform fiber properties correctly, which is not the case in natural fibers. In this study, the flax stems were treated with Pectinase Ultra SPL enzyme targeted to degrade the pectin bonds between the fibers and plant stem, without affecting the structural component cellulose. In this study, the size of technical fibers hand extracted from dew and enzyme retted flax are compared. The hand extracted enzyme retted stem fibers showed more uniform, finer diameters resulting in better tensile properties when compared with dew/field retted stem fibers. The improved properties are related to the diameter effect in which as the area of these fibers is reduced, the reduction of defects during the fiber extraction.