Production of Fiber From Mesquite Plant (prosopis juliflora. L)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the chemical content of mesquite (prosopis juliflora) stalk, and the potential use in manufacture of sustainable fiber reinforced polymer composite, papermaking, plastics and textile industry. The raw mesquite stalk has 69% cellulose, 8% hemicelluloses, 0.53% lignin and 11.19% moisture content. The proportion of minerals in the samples were estimated by Inductively Coupled Plasma Emission (ICPE) spectrometer, the minerals in μg/L were, and Ba concentration is less than μg/L. The production of vegetable fibers from the prosopis juliflora stalk was done through chemical extraction and water treatment. The produced fibers have 67% Cellulose, 5.47% lignin, 7.20% hemicelluloses and 0.09% ash. The fibers characterized by Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Density, porosity and Tensile strength. The density of the fiber was 0.50 g/cm3 and porosity 0.671. The FTIR spectrum show peaks at 3423.76, 2920.32, 781.20 and 1425.44 cm-1, attributed to O-H stretching, C-H stretching, C-O stretching and deformation vibrations of CH2 and CH groups respectively. The Tensile strength for three samples and elongation for each sample, were 1.09 kg, 3.76 kg , 1 kg, and elongation 1.09% , 1.03% , 0.56% respectively. The Morphological investigation was carried out using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and identifying elements zoom in 20 μm. By analyzing cross section of the sample, it was found to contain 80.6% oxygen and 19.4% calcium.