Industrial hemp is an emerging research area, and the hemp market is projected to reach ~$36B (CAGR 34%), by the year of 2026. The hemp plant is the source of two types of raw materials, bast fiber and hurd. While the fiber can be used in textile industry, the hurd can be transformed into bioplastics and bioproducts. However, textile fiber production from hemp bast fiber is difficult, because the fiber cannot be spun and finished on cotton processing equipment without its extensive modification.  Cotton spinning systems require six important spinning fiber properties, namely, uniform staple length, low stiffness, sufficient strength, softness/fineness, and single entity fiber. For hemp, the lack of these properties makes it difficult to be spun on cotton spinning systems, and prohibits the integration of the fiber into production line.<br/><br/>The fiber coarseness is one of the major hindrances to hemp's fiber production as it requires high investments for specialized machinery. Coarseness is caused by the presence of high amounts of lignin which binds the plant fibers, and provides rigidity to the cell wall. Therefore, to process this fiber using this equipment, lignin removal (so-called “cottonization”) is required, which is currently a highly intensive chemical process.<br/><br/>The presentation will illustrate the efforts in hemp fiber cottonization for production of a textile fiber, using Green Chemistry methods.

Transformation of hemp bast into usable fiber for hemp-based textiles

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.