Microscopic Structural Features and Properties of Single Fibers from Different Morphological Parts of the Windmill Palm

Abstract

The chemical, morphological, physical, and thermal properties of raw materials and single fibers extracted from different morphological parts of windmill palm were examined and comprehensively characterized after an alkali treatment. Leaf sheathes (LS) with the highest cellulose content (52.26%) achieved the most efficient extraction of fibers. Single fibers extracted from the vascular bundles of the windmill palm raw material had a slender shape with a tapering and sealing terminus, with each single fiber possessing a lumen in its cross-section. These windmill palm fibers displayed similar chemical compositions, but they exhibited significant differences in morphological parameters. Leaf blade fibers (LBFs) had the longest length (1240 μm ± 470 μm) and highest aspect ratio (121.39), which presented excellent potential as a reinforced fiber. After the alkali treatment, almost all of the hemicelluloses and lignin were removed, which resulted in increased crystallinity of extracted fibers. Thermogravimetric analysis confirmed LS stability up to 319 °C, which was higher than that of other materials from windmill palm.

Ultrastructure of royal palm (Roystonea regia) leaf sheath

“…the outside, middle and inside in the wide direction. Same with the morphological of palm in general (Khalil et al 2006, Chen et al 2017, in the transverse section of royal palm leaf sheath were composed of two main components i.e. primary vascular bundle and parenchymal tissue.…”

“…The vascular bundles diameter of the royal palm leaf sheath was smaller than the diameter of the vascular bundles of oil palm, which range from 800 to 1,000 μm (Shirley 2002), and higher than vascular bundles diameter of windmill palm leaf sheath (Zhai 2013) and coconut palm leaf sheath (Satyanarayana et al 1982). Furthermore, Quiroz et al (2008) and Chen et al (2017) mentioned that the dimension and number of unit of vascular bundle could be affected by the species as well as differences in the growth condition which may also be explained by differences among site variations in the microclimatic condition, even in the analogous palms. Moreover, the authors explained that the characteristics of vascular bundles can be contributed to the mechanical properties of the palm as raw materials.…”

“…As agricultural and plantation wastes, the abundance of natural fibers has potentially used for reinforcing materials. The development of natural fiber composite products in the market has been segmented not only for conventional composite products but also into inorganic compound, natural polymer, and synthetic polymer-based on matrix for automotive, construction, electronics, and sporting goods purposes (Khalil et al 2012, Kumar et al 2016, Chen et al 2017, Chauhan and Bhushan 2017.…”

Influence of chemical composition of windmill palm fibre on crystallinity after alkali peroxide bleaching by grey model

“…The chemical constituents of the fibre samples were initialized to decrease the discretization of data (equation 5). The initialized each line data (hemicellulose content, cellulose content and lignin content corresponding to Table 2) were accumulated to the cumulative sequences X k i 1 ( ) (equation (6)). The mean sequences Z k 1 ( ) of X k 0 1 ( ) ( ) were computed using equation (7).…”

“…[3][4][5] The main components of windmill palm fibre include hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin. 6 To date, several studies have examined the aggregation structure of flax, 7 ramie, 8 cotton, 9 oil palm empty fruit bunches 10 Influence of chemical composition of windmill palm fibre on crystallinity after alkali peroxide bleaching by grey model and windmill palm fibres. 11 However, there have been few reports that discuss the relationship between the chemical composition and cellulose crystallinity of windmill palm fibres.…”