Design and Fabrication of Multi Plant Stem Fiber Extraction Machine

Abstract

The interest of using natural plant fiber is increasing. Nowadays Natural fibers are preferable than synthetic fiber for their appropriate stiffness, mechanical properties and high disposability. There are two ways of plant stem fiber extraction adopted. These are stripping and decortications by a decorticator. Manual extraction of fibers by stripping method is tedious, time consuming and cannot be recommended for industrial application. There is a semi-automatic decorticator machine which used for extraction of fiber from the skin, bark, or rind off nuts, wood, plant stalks etc. It is used in the production of natural plant stem fiber extraction with high production rate, but it is expensive and not available in Ethiopia. The country had an agricultural lead economy, producing a variety of cereals, fruits, vegetables and cash crops. The Authors designed and fabricated multi plant stem fiber extraction machine. The machine has a horizontal drum whereby a drum has two different surfaces. The first half drum surface has closely welded small nails which used to extract fiber from plant stem which have a flat surface like, banana plant, sisal plant etc. The second half drum surface is grooved which used to extract fiber from plant stem which have a circular shape like papyrus plant. The fiber extraction could be performed simply by feeding a cleaned part of the stem through feeding unit of machine. Currently in the country there is no electromechanical plant fiber extraction machine. Some plant fiber extractor’s in the country uses manual extraction of plant fiber. Authors fabricated plant stem fiber extraction machine have a higher production rate than manual extraction and the Authors planned to fabricate and distribute more machines for small scale enterprises participated in fiber extraction in the country.

Keywords

Textile; Plant Fiber; Fiber Extraction; Decorticator; Stripping

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