As hemp is a renewable resource with the high biomass yield it could be considered as potential abundant local biomass material for a wide range of applications. In this article hemp fibres architecture as a source of high strength cellulose are analysed. In experimental part steam explosion technology is applied to disintegrate technical hemp fibres to elementary fibres with the aim to find out the best way of procedure without usage to environment harmful chemical pre-treatments and looking forward to solve problems on further nano-level environment friendly hemp cellulose disintegration.
The main task in preparing hemp shives for further processing is to remove noncellulosic substances without usage of strong chemical treatments applying the steam explosion (SE) auto-hydrolysis process. The results indicate that the SE has significant effects on lignin removal and distribution of hemp shives. Effects of pre-treatment temperature and duration on characteristics of the steam exploded shives are studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Key words: hemp shives, steam explosion, lignin, biomass IntroductIonThe synthetic man-made fibres can be replaced by the micro-and nano-scale cellulosic fibres obtained by green technologies. Eco-efficient green chemistry and industrial ecology are the guidelines for the development of next-generation materials, processes and products.Hemp (Cannabis sativa) ( Fig. 1 (A)) suitable for the Latvian climate is one of the fastest growing plants with a potential in a number of industrial areas. Hemp fibres obtained from straw can be used effectively in many applications, whereas shives are considered as an invalid part and are often combusted to get cheap fuel. At the same time, it is shown that shives ( Fig. 1(B)), woody core particles of hemp stems, can be used in different fields, such as livestock bedding [1], horticultural mulch [2], chemical absorbents [3] and industrial insulating building materials [4] demonstrating excellent properties. By now, it is important to investigate a new processing technology that will broaden application areas, as well as improve efficiency of the usage of the shives comprising 80% of the plant biomass.Several methods generally based on successive chemical [7,8] and mechanical [9] treatments are used to extract highly purified micro-fibrils from the plant cell wall. The steam explosion (SE) auto-hydrolysis is currently comprehensively studied as a promising green pre-treatment tech- 21Extraction of highly purified microfibrils from the renewable resources by using green technology nology [10] to obtain micro-fibrils of cellulose and also to remove lignin from the cellulose. Removal of lignin after SE makes the cellulose accessible for further processing, for example, by electro-spinning -a novel process of forcing a suspension by electric field through a spinneret to obtain superfine fibres.Effective usage of SE for treatment of the shives could provide lignin-free cellulose micro-fibrils. This could provide new application areas for shives where they could not be possible to use by now. MethodoloGyHemp shives of the local variety 'Purini' grown on the experimental fields of the Latgalian Agriculture Research Center LLZC (Latvia, Vilani District) were used as lignocellulosic biomass. Laboratory-type steam explosion equipment was used to make steam explosion treatment experiments [16].After steam explosion treatment, within a split second, the biomass is decompressed (exploded) to one atmosphere. Empirically, the so-called severity parameter or the reaction ordinate R 0 can be exp...
Microfibers and nanofibers from natural products have high mechanical properties. For this reason researchers pay particular attention to the natural fibers and to the method how they are obtained. In the research samples with different treatments (alkaline pretreatment, steam explosion and water extraction) were investigated to evaluate treatment influence on fiber diameters. Fractionation does not provide actual results of fibers diameter as thinner fibers agglomerate to each other and around thicker fibers and cannot be sieved. Fiber diameter measurement with an optical microscope shows that pretreatment and treatment reduced the thickest fiber percentage and increase the number of fine particles. Dew-retted hemp gives 16% of thicker fibers and only 39% fibers with a diameters less than 63µm. 50% of alkaline pretreated and steam explosion treated fibers diameters are less than 63 µm and only 8% of diameters fall in range 160 - 630 µm.
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