Review of Literature

Variable 2 (Pineapple Leaf Fibers)

“Production of Paper from Pineapple Leaves”

(Stephen Sibaly, Pratima Jeetah)

Paper production all around the world had been using wood as the major raw
material. The use of wood hugely contributed to severe deforestations, having direct
negative impact on our environment. This has led to the need of finding alternative raw
materials for paper production. This paper aims at testing the viability of producing paper
from pineapple leaves as an alternative to wood. Pineapple leaf fibers, as resources for
paper production, is considerably new in the paper production industry. Pineapples
cultivated under selective breeding were concluded to have higher cellulose content than
wood fibers, indicating that such non-timber fiber make good substitutes. In this paper,
samples of pineapple leaf fibre were mixed with cane-bagasse in different ratios namely,
20:80, 40:60, 60:40, 80:20, 100:0. Pineapple leaf fibres were also mixed with wastepaper
in the same ratios. The papers obtained were tested for their physical and mechanical
properties (namely, the thickness, absorbency, tensile strength and tensile index, bursting
strength and burst index, abrasion resistance, and crease recovery).

Results:

It was found that pineapple leaf fibers had better compatibility with bagasse as a
composite rather than wastepaper which demonstrated low physical and mechanical
properties. This is due to the bagasse and pineapple fibers having better interlacing bonds
as demonstrated by their properties of Tensile Index, Burst Index, and abrasion
resistance being higher than wastepaper and pineapple composites. The most absorbent
paper (1.19 s) was found to be the 100% pineapple one and the least absorbent (1.68 s)
was the bagasse and pineapple composite of ratio 80:20. The 100% pineapple paper,
thus demonstrated the best results for most of the tests carried out. It should be noted
that the papers demonstrated satisfactory results even though they were produced
without any additives to improve their mechanical and physical properties. This shows the
production of papers from 100% pineapple fibers can be used for various purposes and
can help save trees and deforestation by becoming an alternative to wood based papers.
The finals results imply that pineapple fibers coming from any country can be used as raw
materials for paper production. Any country can also benefit greatly from the use of natural
fibers in order to boost the country’s sustainability and economy and can be of help in the
reduction of the amount of wastes being brought into landfill.

Source: Sibaly, S., & Jeetah, P. (2017). Production of paper from pineapple leaves.
Journal of Environmental Chemical Engineering, 5(6), 5978–5986.

https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jece.2017.11.026