Maurice Kor Ndikontar

Mechanical Properties and Life-Cycle Sustainability Aspects of Natural Fibre

In order to understand the basic definition of the natural material, references of recently published articles were studied. From these articles, the definition of different terms like renewable material, recyclable material, biodegradable material, sustainable material and finally natural material were collected. Furthermore, a classification of natural fibre was drawn. One of these natural fibres - the coconut was chosen for a more detail analysis in mechanical point of view. An integrated method to analyse the sustainability of the coconut fibre as one of the blend components in building construction will be suggested. Finally, several uses of the fibre are reviewed.

Optimisation of Graft Copolymerisation of Fibres from Banana Trunk

Sheets from banana trunks were opened out and dried for several weeks in air. Pulp was obtained by the nitric acid process with a yield of 37.7% while fibres were obtained according to the modified standard Japanese method for cellulose in wood for pulp (JIS 8007) with a yield of 65% with respect to oven dried plant material. Single fibre obtained by the JIS method had an average diameter of 11.0 μm and Youngs modulus, tensile strength and strain at break-off 7.05 GPa, 81.7 MPa and 5.2% respectively. Modification of the fibres was carried out by grafting ethyl acrylate in the presence of ammonium nitrate cerium(IV). Optimisation of the copolymerisation reaction conditions was studied by measuring the rate of conversion, the rate of grafting and the grafting efficiency. The results showed that at low values of ceric ion concentration (0.04 M), at ambient temperature, after three hours and at a concentration of 0.2 M ethyl acrylate, maximum values of the parameters cited were obtained.