9—THE ENZYMATIC SOFTENING AND UPGRADING OF LIGNOCELLULOSIC FIBRES PART II: THE SOFTENING AND CLEANING OF BARKY ROOT-ENDS OF JUTE AND MESTA FOR THEIR BETTER UTILIZATION IN THE INDUSTRY

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
With the preponderance of low-grade jute and mesta fibres available to the industry, softening of the barky and hard root-ends has become a major need in the batching section of a jute mill. The enzymatic method, developed earlier at the Indian Jute Industries' Research Association to soften and clean the body of low-grade lignocellulosic fibres, has been utilized for the purpose, with some modifications, for the release of adequately clean and split filaments of normal jute. Test results obtained from bulk trials in mills show that enzymatic softening of root-ends leads to the double benefit of using a higher proportion of root-section fibre in the batch and improved performance of the process, especially at the spinning stage. Except for the low-grade white jute (Grade W5 and below), all other root-end-treated low-grade fibres could be processed without cutting the root-ends and incorporated in higher proportions in the hessian- and sacking-warp batches without any difficulty in spinning. When the root-end treatment was extended to cover all the piled fibres, especially of the low-grade type, the spinning performance of the sacking-weft batch, mainly consisting of soft fibres released from pre-treated line cuttings, was significantly improved. The estimated net cost-saving realized from this enzymatic process, including gains from improved performance in spinning, ranged from Rs 50/- to Rs 100/- (i.e., from about £2.75 to £5.50) per tonne of batch.

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: