An economical and environmentally benign approach to extract banana fibres from agricultural waste for fibre reinforced composites

Shifting from excessive use of uncontrollable synthetic materials to environmentally friendly natural materials, especially from Agricultural waste such as banana stem fibres, offers an attractive and an alternative source to solve this issue. Therefore, the extraction of fibres from the non-edible agricultural waste of the banana tree using advanced integrated technologies can assist in lessening the environmental burden, manufacturing cost, and accosting the sustainability provisions. In that context, banana fibre extraction machine and wet-laid nonwoven web setup were developed to produce homogeneous reinforcement for the fabrication of bio-composites along with the unsaturated polyester resin. Furthermore, the mechanical properties of the fabricated bio-composites in terms of tensile, flexural and impact strength were assessed and compared with jute fibre reinforced composites. The mechanical properties of the banana fibre reinforced composites were inferior, but comparable to the jute fibre reinforced composites.