Prueba de una desfibradora de espadilla para extracción de fibras de kenaf

Abstract

In investigations conducted in Santiago de las Vegas. Cuba, kenaf fiber was succesfully recovered by a scutebing-type defiberer with the same settings as those used for benequén Highest recovery of fiber was obtained from young plants that were fed into the machine as u bole stalks and in such way that the top ends were scutched first Under these conditions, 96 percent of the total fiber fed into the machine was recovered from 63-day-old plants. Defibering whole stems first and scutching top ends first resulted in a larger residue of nonfibrous material on the fiber and in fiber of greater tensil strenght than defibering vibbons and scutching base ends first. With the use of only the basal 4-foot section of the stem, the over all efficiency of the defibetes in recovering the total fiber produced per acre was only 75 percent for the 63-day-old kenaf and decreased with the age of the plants to 48 percent for the 128 day-old-kenaf Undoubtedly the efficiency of the extraction could be materially increased for the older plants by recovering fiber from the part of the stem discarded in this experiment.