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Nowadays, there is greater demand for greener materials in societies due to environmental consciousness, depleting fossil fuels and growing ecological concerns. Within the foreseeable future, industries and suppliers will be required to be more aware of challenges faced due to the availability of resources and use more sustainable and renewable raw materials. In this context, cellulose can be expected to become a vital resource for materials owing to its abundance, versatility as a biopolymer, several different forms and potential applications. Thus, all-cellulose composites (ACCs) have gained significant research interest in recent years. ACC is a class of biocomposites in which the matrix is a dissolved and regenerated cellulose, while the reinforcement is undissolved or partly dissolved cellulose. This review paper is intended to provide a brief outline of works that cover recent progress in the manufacturing and processing techniques for ACCs, various cellulose sources, solvents and antisolvents, as well as their properties.

Resurser och hållbarhet är nära förknippade. Hållbarhet innebär att hushålla med resurser - materiella, miljömässiga och mänskliga. Och hushållning är per definition kärnan i ekonomi. Man börjar alltmer se framväxten av en hel arsenal av verktyg och förhållnings- och angreppssätt för att bygga hållbarhet. Detta förenas av ett synsätt att det som hitintills setts om avfall och värdelöst, och rent utav besvärligt att ta hand om, nu blir en värdefull resurs. Det glömda och gömda kommer åter. Faktum är att många ord och begrepp kring detta börjar på just åter- eller re- . Internationellt talar man om Redesign, Recycling, Remake, Recycle, Recraft, Reuse, Recreate, Reclaim, Reduce, Repair, Refashion. Vad är då allt detta? Ja, vill man dra det långt, är det inte mindre än framväxten av ett nyvunnet sätt att tänka, ja av en ny samhällssektor, en bransch och en industri, sammanbundet av filosofin att återanvändningen, spillminskningen, vidarebruket, efterlivet anses som viktiga faktorer för ett miljömedvetet samhälle. Re: blir paraplytermen för detta. I denna antologi av forskare från skilda discipliner vid Högskolan i Borås lyfts ett antal av dessa begrepp inom Re: fram.

There is need for the bio‐based materials which could fully or partly replace the synthetic materials in automotive components. Several studies have been suggested to incorporate natural fiber based materials into automotives, and regenerated cellulose fibers could have a great potential several automotive applications. In the paper we will describe ongoing research where we study non‐woven viscose and Lyocell as well as uniaxial continuous viscose filament reinforcements for the use in structural composites. Hybrid reinforcements based on regenerated cellulose fibers and glass fibers have also been studied, with the intention to optimize the reinforcement durability. The uniaxial viscose filament reinforcements were prepared by a winding technique, and we have also combined the viscose filament with continuous hemp yarns as well as different thermoplastic yarns. Both thermoset and thermoplastic composites were then produced by compression moulding with a pressure of 40 bar and at the temperature between 160‐170°C for 5 minutes. The resulting composites have been characterized regarding mechanical and thermal properties.

Composites were manufactured from regenerated cellulose and biobased matrix by compression molding. The reinforcing materials used were Lyocell and viscose, while the matrix used was chemically modified soybean oil. Hybrid composites were prepared by mixing both the fibers. The total fiber content in the composites was between 40-60 weight %. Lyocell based composites had better tensile properties than viscose based composites; composites consisting 60 weight % Lyocell impregnated with matrix had tensile strength of 135 MPa and tensile modulus of 17 GPa. These composites also showed better flexural properties; flexural strength of 127 MPa and flexural modulus of 7 GPa. Dynamic mechanical thermal analysis results showed that these composites had good viscoelastic properties. Viscose based composites had better percentage elongation; these composites also showed relatively good impact and viscoelastic properties. Hybrid composites showed good mechanical and viscoelastic properties. Scanning electron microscope images showed that the composites had good fiber-matrix adhesion.

In recent years, natural fibre-reinforced polymer composites have been attracting attention from the viewpoint of reducing the impact on the natural environment. Currently, the use of thermoplastic resins in composites is clearly of higher potential than the use of thermoset. There are many thermoplastic polymers derived from renewable raw materials, which are also biodegradable. Polylactic acid (PLA) is one such candidate, and it shows rather good properties that are suitable for applications that do not require long-term durability or elevated mechanical performance at higher temperatures. In order to make their possible use in many technical applications more attractive, the mechanical properties of the PLA can be enhanced by using reinforcements. Hemp fibres can be considered to be a good choice for reinforcing polymer composites, due to their high stiffness, strength, and aspect ratio. Highly ordered textile reinforcements, such as interlaced woven fabrics and unidirectional fabrics made from natural-fibre yarns, perform considerably better than random non-woven mats in natural-fibre composites. At present, the commercially available plant-fibre yarns are not intended for structural composites, but for textiles, which have entirely different demands on the yarns. Thus, work is needed to tailor-make the best plant-fibre yarn for reinforcement of composites. This also includes investigation of the possibility of combining plant-fibre yarns with the matrix polymer in fibre form into one hybrid yarn (a composite preform), and how to do it (twisting or blending). It is well known that fibres provide the highest strength and stiffness when they are continuous and aligned in the direction of the applied load. Natural fibres are naturally discontinuous and conventional spun staple yarns tend to be highly twisted, which leads to fibre misalignment and poor resin wet-out. The structured natural-fibre composites reported so far are based on twisted yarns produced by long-established conventional spinning methods, mainly ring spinning.In this paper, we report our work on improving the orientation of hemp fibres in composites by using our recent development of co-wrapped yarn structures. This novel co-wrapped yarn consists of low twist and very fine hemp yarns next to PLA filaments in the core part, which are wrapped by PLA filaments. By varying the composition of hybrid yarn, it is possible to vary the hemp fibre content from 10 to 45 wt %. An exciting recent advancement has been a new family of aligned natural-fibre reinforcements, which has overcome these issues by using low twist yarns. We also report the influence of fibre content and wrap density (number of wraps per unit length) on the properties of composites. Before compression moulding, multilayer 0/90 bidirectional hybrid yarn prepregs were prepared by winding the hybrid yarn around a steel rectangular frame. We investigated the mechanical and thermo-mechanical properties of hemp-reinforced PLA composites. Compared to neat PLA, the tensile and flexural modulus and the strength of the PLA-hemp composites were significantly higher as a result of the increased fibre content. Impact strength of the composites decreased initially up to 10 wt % fibre loading, but even higher fibre loading caused an improvement in impact strength. From the DMTA results, it is evident that incorporation of the fibres gives a considerable increase in storage modulus and a decrease in tan δ values. These results show the reinforcing effect of hemp on PLA matrix. From the general trend in the results obtained, it can be affirmed that co-wrapped hybrid yarn with lower wrapping density leads to lower mechanical properties in the composite. The study performed with DSC revealed that the glass transition temperature and the crystalline melting point of PLA were not affected significantly after reinforcement with hemp. The crystallisation temperature of the hemp-reinforced PLA composites decreased compared to pure PLA, which indicates that the hemp fibres hinder the migration and diffusion of PLA molecular chains to the surface of the nucleus in the composites. No noteworthy differences in calorimetric data from DSC for composites were observed between the hybrid yarn preforms with different wrapping density. Future work will concentrate on efforts to evaluate the biodegradability of these developing and promising composites.

During the last two decades, the applications of fluorocarbon based chemicals to provide soil resistant or soil release properties for automotive interior and upholstery have increased tremendously. But, recent studies showed that the soil resistant treatment based on fluorochemicals has detrimental effects on the environment as well as on humans due to the presence of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) content. PFOS and PFOA are toxic, bio accumulative and bio persistent fluoro-organic compounds. This project focus on PFOS and PFOA-free soil resistant chemicals and their application on interior textiles used for automotive. Literature study was done by keeping in mind all the aspects regarding soil and nature of soils, soil resistant mechanism, PFOA and PFOS-free soil resistant chemicals, chemistry of the chemicals, area of the application and the method of application. Experimental application of PFOA and PFOS-free soil resistant chemicals by using different concentrations on 100% Polyester dyed and unfinished fabric was performed with Pad-Dry-Cure method. Experimental application was carried out to evaluate the soil resistant treated samples for soil resistant, clean ability and colour change results. At the end, the comparison of the results of three mentioned evaluations gave us the best possible alternatives. Program: Magisterutbildning i textilteknologi