Year: 2026 | Month: June | Volume 13 | Issue 1
Improvement in Banana Fibre Quality through Enzymatic, Chemical and Physical Modifications
Kartick K. Samanta
Sayantan Chakraborty
S. Basak
Deb Prasad Ray and D.B. Shakyawar
DOI:10.30954/2347-9655.01.2026.11
Abstract :
Banana fibre is an annually renewable material that is available approximately 412. 6 million tonnes each year, produced from the pseudostem of banana plant. Extracted raw fibre consists of 60–65% cellulose and the remaining 35–47% consists of pectin, hemicellulose, lignin and wax. Fibre without any modification remains inadequate for manufacturing value-added textiles. To make the fibre amenable for textile, three important modification processes namely chemical (alkali), physical (boiling or ultrasonication) and enzymatic (pectinase, xylanase, laccase) are mostly used. The advantages and disadvantages of individual process on the fibre quality enhancement along with a comparison among those processes has been summarized in details. More emphasis was given on fibre quality improvement in terms of fibre’s fineness, strength, cellulose content, keeping in mind their environmental impact and scope of scalability. Mechanism of action of different types of enzymes was described on a specific substrate. Multi-enzyme system was found to yield better output, raising cellulose content to 84%, enhancing tensile strength by profoundly and reduction in fibre diameter. Hybrid process i.e., combination or sequential treatment of enzymatic and chemical processes could exhibit overall satisfactory results.
Highlights
- Enzymatic modification improved banana fibre fineness from 7.5 to 5.4 tex.
- Enzyme treatment reduced bundle strength marginally from 19.9 to 17.2 g/tex.
- Multi-enzyme treatment increased cellulose content from 54% to 84%.
- Enzymatic treatment reduced fibre diameter from 168 to 101 μm.
- Hybrid treatment achieved minimum fibre diameter of 49 μm.
- Enzymatic retting requires 40–60% less thermal energy than chemical processing.
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