Mechanical Extraction of Jute and Mesta for Quality Fibre Production

Abstract

Jute and mesta termed as raw jute is one of the cheapest natural fibres and is second to cotton in production and variety of uses. The fibre from jute and mesta is obtained by biochemical process i.e., retting in water. Retting is the most critical operation for getting quality fibre. Due to unavailability of sufficient water and water bodies, quality of fibre produced becomes inferior. To avoid scarcity of water, the barks/ribbons consisting fibre are mechanically separated prior to retting. Among the three machines used for ribbon extraction, the throughput capacity of jute decorticator was found to be 230 kg plants h^-1, which is higher than the bast fibre extractor (130 kg h^-1) and manual jute extractor (120 kg h^-1). The average retting duration for microbial consortium mediated ribbons was found to be 7-10 days against 13-15 days without microbial consortium. The fibre recovery in ribbon retting for jute was 7.23-8.66% and for mesta it was 7.08 per cent on green weight basis. The fibre fineness of 2.8 to 3.4 tex was obtained with ribbon retting.