The history of banana fibre is old more than 700 years. People were aware about use of banana fibres since last 700 years. Japanese extracted banana fibres from banana tree in 13th century. The people extracted banana fibres manually. Now these days, banana fibres are being extracted with the help of machine. In the traditional fibres extraction process, banana fibres are extracted manually completely. Nepalies process of fibre extraction is more similar to that of silk fibres.





Banana fibre is obtained from inner bark of the banana stem. When the fruits are picked up from the banana tree, the stem ( trunk) cut closed to ground level. Before few years ago, these trunks were very big problem for farmers. They normally burnt these banana tree

These trunks are sent to a fibre extraction unit. The banana fibres are obtained from brown or creamish portion of inner bark of the trunk. The outer bark ( green portion of the stem is peeled up manually. Now banana fibres are extracted.

Banana Fibre is extracted from inner bark of banana tree. The trunk of banana is peeled manually in the the banana fibres extraction unit. Peeled brown and green part ( outer bark) is thrown away as waste. Now the trunk has white color bark( inner bark). This inner bark is used to extract banana fibres.



PEELING:



Peeling process is performed manually. Before peeling of trunk( stem), the trunk is parted vertically. The trunks are divided into four vertical parts. Now peeler starts peeling of the while colour inner bark from the trunk. The peeled white portion is collected at the suitable place.



FIBRE EXTRACTING:



The peeled white portion ( inner bark) is processed into a machine having pressure rollers and fibres separating mechanism. Since the white inner bark contains huge amount of moisture in it, there for this moisture is required to be eliminated from bark. The pressure rolls help to squeeze the moisture from fibres. For the moisture elimination, the peeled white bark is passed between the rollers nip. Moisture eliminats like sugarcane juice extractor. The machine operator holds one end of peeled trunk and feeds maximum length of peeled trunk between rollers nip.



FIBRE TO FIBRE SEPARATION PROCESS:



When the maximum length of peeled trunk is fed into the machine, the machine operator pulled the trunk back by hand. When he pulls back the trunk, the fibre separation mechanism comes into play. When the operator pulls back trunk, the fibres gets separated automatically. The pulp generating during process gets collected in the bottom of machine. Now operator repeats same process for other end of bark.



WASHING AND SUN DRYING:



The fibres are washed into the water tank properly. The fibres are squeezed and hung on the wooden railing for sun drying. When the fibre gets dried completely, the are packed and sent to spinning centres for yarn manufacturing.

Banana fibre is a natural bast fibre. It has its own physical and chemical characteristics and many other properties that make it a fine quality fibre.





1- The banana fibres give appearance like bamboo fibres.



2- it has better spinnability than bamboo fibres.



3- The banana fibre has high tensile strength 29.98 grams/ denier



4- The banana fibres have good lustre like silk. The lustre of fibres depends upon the fibre extraction and spinning process.



5- The banana fibres has poor elongation characteristic.





6- It has low specific gravity 1.12 .





7- It shows very good moisture absorption quality. It absorbs as well as releases moisture quickly. Moisture regain is 13℅.





8-It is bio- degradable and has no negative effect on environment and thus can be categorized as eco-friendly fibre.





9- The average fineness of banana fibre is 2400Nm.





10- The banana fibres have versatile spinnability. It can be spun on ring frame, open end, worsted spinning and wet spinning process.



