Mechanical extraction and physical characterization of Agave Angustifolia v. Marginata lignocellulosic fibre

There are at least 1000 types of plant that bear usable fibers [1]. Natural plant fibres are easily obtained in many tropical parts and are available throughout the world. Today these fibres are considered as environment friendly materials owing to their biodegradability and renewable properties [2]. Natural fibres have applications in fields of textile, paper manufacturing, and bioenergy industries owing to their broad availability and properties. Natural fibres can generally be classified based on their origin (e.g., plant, animal, or mineral). Plant/vegetable fibres can be further classified into subgroups according to their source (e.g., stem fibres, leaf fibres, seed fibres, or fruit fibres) [3, 4]. Natural fibres that are obtained from different parts of the plants, to name few, for example, jute, ramie, flax, kenaf and hemp are obtained from the stem; sisal, banana and pineapple from the leaf; cotton and kapok from seed; coir from the fruit. All plant species are built up of cells. When a cell is very long in relation to its width it is called a fibre. The components of natural fibres are cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, pectin, waxes and water-soluble substances. The cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin are the basic components of natural fibres, governing the physical properties of the fibres. The composition depends on the type, age, and origin of the fibre, as well as the method of fibre extraction. The properties of natural fibres also depend on their chemical composition [57].Over 100 million tons of different fibres are manufactured every year out of which 50% of that are derived from crude oil [8].Therefore, many efforts are made to replace at least a small portion of synthetic fibres with cellulose fibres which are obtained from plants or agro-waste materials. Day by day awareness is increasing in Consumers about environmentally friendly products and more and more people want to buy it [9]. In recent years there has been a growing interest of various industries in renewable plant materials. Recently studies have been carried out on agro-waste materials to obtain natural cellulose fibres from wheat straw, soyabean straw, rice straw, corn stalks leaves and stalks of sorghum, banana leaves, sugar cane [1012]. In this present work the plant which is used for fibre extraction and physical and chemical characterization is agave angustifolia v. marginata commonly called the “Banded Carribean Agave” Agave angustifolia belongs to the Agavaceae family. This is a very rugged, attractive, eye-catching plant with symmetrical narrow, stiff bayonet leaves liberally margined in creamy white. The rosettes can be 1 m in diameter with several leaves 50-80 cm long ending in 18 mm long terminal spine. It is grown as an ornamental plant worldwide. Native from Costa Rica to Mexico. Each rosette develops a trunk 40 cm high and produces offsets around the base, eventually forming clumps .A single plant has 20 to 30 offsets spreading to 15 feet away from the parent plant. This is one of the few agaves that forms much of a stem. Fairly tropical, it grows quickly, but will not tolerate much frost. It grows best in full sun but can adapt to some shade [13]. The fibres were mechanically extracted, characterized using chemical analysis, FTIR, XRD and TGA techniques. The surface structural characterization of the fibres were examined by using scanning electron microscope. Tensile testing Abstract: Agave angustifolia v. marginata is a leaf fibre which was mechanically extracted from the green leaves of the plant using water retting extraction method. The chemical composition of Agave angustifolia fibre was also determined. The composition mainly consisted of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and ash. Structural analysis was carried out by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), SEM, TGA, X-ray diffraction, tensile and moisture regain properties are studied.