Cottonisation of Decorticated Flax Fibres

The commonly used flax process of decortication allows the mechanical extraction of fibre from plant stems without prior retting. The one-type fibre obtained in this process is characterised by very low quality, as it is poorly divided, has high linear mass and high amounts of impurities. This paper presents a description of a newly developed method of obtaining high quality flax cottonized fibre from low quality decorticated fibre by application of a wet degumming process for fibre. The experiment involved studying the parameters of flax fibres after each step of the technological process i.e. after decortication, wet degumming and final mechanical cottonisation. The study covered tests of the following fiber parameters: linear mass, length, impurities, chemical composition as well as thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis and scanning electron microscopy images. The results confirm the efficiency of the method applied for obtaining high quality fibre from decorticated flax fibre.