About This Special Issue
During the last few decades, natural plant fibers reach the interest of many research works all over the world due to their attractive properties. Besides renewability and biodegradability, plant fibers are characterized by their good availability, low cost and density, limited damage to the processing equipment, and reasonable strength and stiffness.
The majority of plants present a composite structure with an organic matrix and a reinforcement composed of cellulose fibres, which show different kinds of chemical bonding such as covalent, hydrogen or Van Der Waals bonds. The organic matrix is composed of several components including hemicelluloses, pectic matter, lignin and gums; whereas the reinforcing fibres are mainly composed of cellulose.
To extract fibers from the plant, It exist different methods which have a great influence on the fine structure of the resultatnt fibres and consequently on the chemical composition (cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose contents), physical properties (density, fineness, crystallinity) as well as mechanical properties of the obtained fibers. It results that the fiber extraction from the plant and its characterization is an essential step prior to the technical application of this fiber. It is worth being studied and focused on.
