Construction of a pilot plant for producing fine linen fibers for textiles

A newly built 200-L-pilot plant was used for testing a novel chemo-enzymatic process for producing fine flax fibers without the weather-associated risks of dew retting. Raw, green and decorticated flax fibers were placed inside trays in the tempered main tank of the pilot plant, where a vertically acting mechanism gently moved the parallel fiber bundles. The fibers were incubated in an alkaline bath, in a pectinolytic culture of Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius PB94A and in a peroxide-softener bath. Finally the fibers were dried, combed and hackled into a sliver that is ready for wet-spinning of linen yarns. A total of 140. kg of raw fibers were treated in 40 different experiments in the pilot plant. The resolution of the raw fibers improved from 7.3 to 2.7 ± 0.3 after the treatment. The fineness was enhanced from 37.4. dtex to 11.1 ± 1.2. dtex. The proposed pilot-plant process produced constant-quality fibers and could be easily up-scaled.

Subjects

Alkaline pectinases

Flax

Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius

Pilot plant

Retting

Textiles

DDC Class

570: Biowissenschaften, Biologie

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Construction of a pilot plant for producing fine linen fibers for textiles