Evaluation of banana fibre and kymene mixture for suitable paper / Muhammad Ammar Farhan Abdul Rahim ...[et al.]

Pollution rate across the world is increasing due to the usage of non-biodegradable materials. Greener form of materials is being researched to find a suitable solution to the problem. A reliable solution is to use banana fibres as papermaking materials. Banana fibres from the stem has a number of unique characteristics. The purpose of this study to determine the appropriateness of utilizing banana stem fibre for paper production. Banana fibre were chemically pulped using 0.1 mole NaOH and cooked about 1.5 hours. The characteristics of the banana fibre, lower lignin content and higher alpha cellulose could demonstrate its potential for the produce of a decent quality handcrafted paper while giving a chance to be utilized as fortifying fibre by mixing the banana fibre with additives ingredient like soy protein (kymene ). Therefore, for enhancing the properties of the banana fibre, kymene as the additives ingredients were added into the pulp in the percentage of 20% and 50%. This was purposely to strengthen the paper and the performance of the paper was investigated by parameters such as moisture content, absorbency rate and tensile strength analysis. Difference on weight of papers with different percentage of kymene depicts clearly different of absorbency rate between 0%, 20% and 50% kymene, but nearly same for 20% and 50% kymene. Moisture content of papers revealed the value have not so much different. Indication from this study are that banana stem fibre can be use as the crude material alternative for the production of paper by enhancing the properties with adding additives such as kymene.