Sisal Fiber
Sisal fiber has a botanical name Agave sisalana, which is a
species of Agave native to southern Mexico but widely cultivated and
naturalized in many other countries. It is found in a solid fiber used in
making various products. The term sisal can refer to the common name or fiber
of a plant, depending on the context. Sometimes it is also known as "sisal
hemp" because hemp has been a major source of fiber for centuries and
other fiber sources were named after it.
The sisal fiber is traditionally used for ropes and
yarns and has many more uses, including paper, cloth, footwear, hats, bags,
carpets, geotextiles, and dartboards. It is used as a fiber integrator for
composite fiber-glass, rubber, and cement products.
Properties of Sisal
1. Sisal is a bast fiber.
2. It is about 1.5-2 meters tall
3. It has a 7-10 year life-span
4. It produces 200-250 commercially usable leaves.
5. Each leaf contains around 1000 fibers.
6. It contains fiber about 4% of plant weight.
Plant description and cultivation of sisal
Sisal plants consist of sword-shaped leaves about
1.5–2 meters tall. The young leaves may have teeth for a few minutes along the
margins but may lose as they turn. Sisal plants have a 7-10-year lifespan and
typically produce 200-250 commercially useful leaves. Each leaf contains about
1000 fibers on average. Fibers divide about 4% of plants by weight. Sisal is
considered a plant of the tropics and subtropics since production benefits from
temperatures above 25 °C and sunshine.
In the nineteenth century, sisal cultivation spread
to Florida, the Caribbean islands, and Brazil, and countries in Africa,
especially Tanzania and Kenya, and Asia. Sisal came to Africa from Florida,
through the mechanics of an extraordinary German botanist named Hinderf.
Brazil's first commercial plant was built in the late 1930s, and the first
sisal fiber was exported from there in 1948. Brazilian production did not
accelerate until the 1960s, and the first of many spinning mills were
established. Today Brazil is the main producer of sisal. Sisal growth has both
positive and negative environmental effects.
Fiber collection
The fiber is collected by a process known as
decortication, where the leaves are crushed, beaten, and a rotating wheelset is
cleaned with a blunt knife so that only the fibers remain. Differently, in East
Africa, where production is large estates, the leaves are transported to a
central decortication plant, where water is used to wash away the waste parts
of the leaf.
The fiber is then dried, brushed, and billed for
export. Proper drying is important because the quality of the fiber largely
depends on the amount of moisture. Artificial drying results in better grades
of fiber than sun drying, but not always in developing countries where sisal is
produced. In the drier climate of northeast Brazil, sisal is mainly grown by
smallholders, and the fiber is extracted by teams using portable raspadors that
do not use water.
Fiber is subsequently cleaned by brushing. The dried
fibers are sorted into different grades by scraping the machine mainly in the
form of the separation size of the anterior region of the leaves.
Uses
1. Sisal fiber is used as a rope, twines, and general
cordage for its low-cost and specialty paper, dartboards, buffing cloth,
filters, geotextiles, mattresses, carpets, handicrafts, wire rope cores,
2. It has been used as an environmentally-friendly
strengthening agent to replace asbestos and fiberglass in composite materials.
3. Its lower grade is used paper industry and medium grade is used in the cordage industry.
4. Its rope and twine are used in marine,
agriculture, and general industry.
5. Its higher grade yarn is used in the carpet
industry.
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