Alkali Treatment Effect on Physicochemical and Tensile Properties of Date Palm Rachis Fibers

Abstract

This work aims to optimize the physicochemical and tensile properties of vascular fibers extracted from a local date palm rachis in Algeria. This fiber has a very specific composition and architecture and is different from the remaining fibers obtained from the six possible parts of the tree. For this purpose, a Taguchi orthogonal array design L16 was applied to reduce the number of experiments. The fibers were extracted from the rachis with two different methods (boiling and retting in water) and treated by NaOH with various concentrations (1%, 2%, 3%, and 5%) and for different durations (1, 4, 8, and 12 h). They were characterized using SEM-EDX, ATR-FTIR, XRD, and TGA to understand the effects of the extraction method and alkali treatment. A statistical treatment of the data was carried out based on the S/N ratio and ANOVA was performed to identify the most significant parameters affecting the tensile strength and the Young’s modulus of the fibers. A desirability function was developed to identify the optimal factors leading to the maximization of the tensile properties.

Keywords

• date palm fibers
• vascular bundles
• alkali treatment
• taguchi design
• tensile and physicochemical properties