Surface modification of hemp fiber to improve spinning properties

Abstract

Finer count hemp yarn (<20-50 tex) for apparel and smart textiles applications with a minimum number of imperfections cannot be manufactured using the cotton spinning system due to the presence of non-cellulosic materials in the fiber structure. An investigation has been carried out to identify the spinning properties of hemp fibers including strength, length and length variation, single fiber entity, fineness, bending modulus and softness by removing non-cellulosic materials from hemp. Different chemical and enzyme treatments were employed to improve the selected spinning properties of hemp fiber. It was found that bleaching at 95°C for 240 min (min) after scouring removed the largest amount of non-cellulosic materials. After the carding process, the softness of treated samples, with the highest weight loss (%) was found to be improved by about 2.6 times more than the virgin hemp fiber.