5th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NATURAL FIBERS

Please leave these first three lines blank for the Editors
Please leave these first three lines blank for the Editors
Please leave these first three lines blank for the Editors
LINSEED FLAX: A POTENCIAL SOURCE OF FIBRE SUITABLE FOR
LOAD BEARING COMPOSITES
Mahadev Bar(*), Marie Gregoire, Saif U. Khan, Emmanuel De Luycker, Pierre Ouagne,
Laboratoire Génie de Production, LGP, Université de Toulouse, INP-ENIT, Tarbes-65000, France
(*)
Email: mbar@enit.fr

ABSTRACT
Linseed flax is a very popular crop grown around the world for the feed-oil production
purpose. In traditional harvesting of linseed flax, the fibre rich stem parts are cut in small
pieces and are left in the field, which causes significant loses of fibrous raw materials. In this
present work, good quality, long and fine fibres are extracted from dew-retted stems of the
linseed flax and the extracted fibres are characterized for their mechanical properties. Two
different approaches, depending on the straw alignment in the bale are considered for the fibre
extraction purpose; namely the scutching-hackling route and the breaking card route. It is
observed that the fibres extracted through scutching-hackling route are longer and cleaner
than that of the fibres extracted through breaking card route but the later has a higher
production rate than the previous method. However, the linseed flax fibres extracted through
both routes have very good mechanical properties which makes them suitable as
reinforcement for the load bearing composites.

INTRODUCTION
The ever-growing problem associated with global waste, public’s growing awareness on
sustainability, environmental legislative pressures such as the European Union end-of-life
vehicle act [1], landfill of waste products directives [2], as well as the growing demand for
more environmentally friendly products with low impact on the environment have bolstered
the interest in bio-based materials in the consumer industry [3]. Use of renewable natural
fibres coming from annual plants such as flax, hemp, or nettle as reinforcement material for
thermoplastic polymer composite manufacturing fits well in this picture.
At the present time, the demand for textile flax is in constant increase and the present
production does not increase at the same rate. This is why, the price of the scutched or
hackled flax is in constant increase and is not necessarily compatible with the needs of
industries such as the automotive for example. Other sources of high performance fibres
should be considered and from them, linseed flax cultivated on about 15000 ha in France but
on more than 600000 ha in Canada [4] could constitute a new way to fulfil the some of the
technical market needs. Indeed, linseed flax fibres are either burnt in the field or collected for
very low added value applications such as heat generation. If the fibre potential was already in
different works [5], the feasibility to manufacture load bearing composite materials from
linseed flax straw harvested after un-perfect dew retting that follows the traditional combine
machine is investigated in this work.
To reach this goal, the fibre mechanical potential as well as the fibre length should be
maintained as high as possible. Two different methods fibre extractions processes were used
depending on the straw alignment within the bales (as summarised by Figure 1). For
randomly oriented straw, breaking rollers associated to a breaking card was used. In the case
of aligned straw, a scutching/hackling device was considered. For both extraction processes,

5th ICNF – Materials of the Future 1

Funchal/Portugal & Online, 17-19 May 2021

the fibres were characterised at the scale of a continuous sliver and their morphological and
mechanical properties characterised to conclude on their potential to manufacture load bearing
composites.

Figure 1: Long and fine fibre extraction approaches from the linseed flax straws.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

The linseed flax fibres extracted through both approaches were characterized at a scale of
continuous sliver for their morphological and mechanical properties to conclude their
potential to manufacture load bearing composites. It is observed that the fibres extracted
through scutching-hackling route are longer and cleaner than that of the fibres extracted
through breaking card route but the later has a higher production rate than the previous
method. The tensile properties of linseed flax fibres extracted manually and through both
approaches are reported in Table 1. The linseed flax fibres extracted through breaking card
method has the lowest mechanical properties among all three samples, it can be attributed to
the fibre damage occurred by the roller pins of the breaker card. However, the mechanical
potential of all extracted fibres is highly sufficient to be considered as reinforcement for the
load bearing composites.
Sample ID Tensile strength (Mpa) Tensile Modulus (GPa)
Manually extracted fibres 1110 ±707 46 ±29
Breaking rollers/card 880 ±297 43 ±19
Scutching/hackling 1004 ±335 44 ±13
Table 1: Tensile properties of the linseed flax fibres
These results will be discussed in relation to the harvesting techniques and the potential of
development in France and in Europe of both fibre extraction routes.

REFERENCES
[1] Directive 2000/53/EC of the European Parliament
[2] Directive 1999/31/EC of the European Parliament.
[3] Meier MA. Metathesis with oleochemicals: new approaches for the utilization of plant oils as renewable
resources in polymer science. Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics. 2009, 210(13‐14):1073-9.
[4] ADEME Report: Assessment of natural fibre availability in France. 2011.
http://www.ademe.fr/sites/default/files/assets/documents/76290_12_evaluation_dispo_accessibilite_fibres_veg_
usages_materiaux.pdf
[5] Ouagne P, Barthod-Malat B, Evon P, Labonne L, Placet V. Fibre extraction from oleaginous flax for
technical textile applications: influence of pre-processing parameters on fibre extraction yield, size distribution
and mechanical properties. Procedia Engineering. 2017; 200, p. 213-220.

2 Editor: R. Fangueiro