Search

The present world is focusing on sustainable products. Most of the natural products collected from are environmentally friendly. In the textile sector the main raw material is fiber. Most textile products are made from the natural cotton fibers. But because of the shortage of this fiber, most of the researchers are looking forwards to other sources of natural fibers. Here in Bangladesh the natural jute fiber is available and the textile industries are making jute products but the jute products are comparatively lower price than cotton products. That's why some factories are making cotton-jute blended yarn to minimise the cost and increase the product's quality and appearance. Here in this research work, it was tried to identify the best cotton-jute blended ratio for producing good quality yarn. 80C-20 J, 60C-40 J and 40C-60 J blended ratios are compared with 100 C and 100 J yarn to analyse the results. The CV m%, Thick/Km +50 %, Neps/Km +200 %, IPI, RKM and Elongation% of blended yarns are evaluated and compared the results between the ratios. After that the yarn quality index (YQI) was calculated to identify the ratio which indicates a relation between yarns strength, elongation% and CVm. The other quality index was fiber quality index (FQI) which indicates a relation between fibers strength, fiber mean length, elongation% and fiber fineness. One way ANOVA was applied to see the significance level between the independent variables. Box plot was applied to see the visual effect of statistical analysis at the same time the regression results show the impact of cotton-jute ratio with an equation, through which it was easy to identify the perfect ratio. It was found that higher percentage of cotton and lower percentage of jute fiber blended yarn shows good results than others. The products which were made from the ratios were shown good results for their different use of purposes.

Gypsum plasterboards are widely used in interior decoration like false ceilings, wall partitioning etc. The main component of this plasterboard is gypsum, which is a mineral material. These boards contain poor mechanical strength with lower durability. The addition of natural fibres in these plasterboards can be useful to achieve better mechanical properties. Since Jute fibre is abundant in Bangladesh and its usability in reinforced composites is well established, for this reason, jute fibre was selected to do the research. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of jute fibre on the mechanical properties of the gypsum plasterboard. To make this board, Plaster of Paris and water were thoroughly mixed to make a suspension first. Different fibre loadings of 2, 4, 6, and 8% were incorporated into gypsum composites. Reinforcement of 6% fibre provided the highest tensile properties, but 8% fibre loading showed inferior tensile and flexural properties. Impact test results showed a gradually improving nature with fibre loading, and hardness values showed a decreasing trend in hardness with higher fibre loading. FTIR results and SEM images confirmed that no significant chemical bonding took place in the composites, instead, the composite depended mainly on the mechanical bonding among the reins crystals and between the fibre and gypsum matrix.

Coir is a lignocellulosic natural fiber derived from the coconut's husk, an abundantly found fruit or nut worldwide. This fiber has some unique characteristics, such as its resistance to seawater, microbial attack, high impact, etc. But its low thermal conductivity or high thermal insulating property makes it suitable for being used as insulators in civil engineering sites. On the other hand, the sustainability of a material depends heavily on its environmental impact of the material. For making sustainable materials like biocomposite, there are no options other than using polymers derived from natural renewable sources. Polylactic acid(PLA) is an example of those types of material. And these materials are often being reinforced by fibers like coir for various reasons including improving mechanical properties, reducing the cost of the material, and improving the material's sustainability. Many coir-reinforced sustainable biopolymer composites have already been produced in many pieces of research, which will be discussed in this paper, along with the chemical and physical structure of coir fiber. In addition, this paper will try to focus on the insulating properties of coir and coir-reinforced composites while will also compare some properties of the composites with some commonly used materials based on different parameters to show the suitability of using the coir fiber in heat-insulating applications and to produce sustainable biocomposite materials.