Isolation and characterization of cellulosic fibers from bamboo shoot shell

The composition of bamboo shoot shell is similar to hemp fiber, and whose traditional degumming process is expensive and easy to cause serious environmental pollution. Herein, acid pretreatment combined with alkali-oxygen bath degumming process was used to obtain bamboo shoot shell fibers. The effects of the dosages of sodium hydroxide and hydrogen peroxide, soaking temperature and time on degumming were discussed. The optimized process parameters of alkali-oxygen bath degumming were obtained by orthogonal experiment as follows: sodium hydroxide 24 g/L, hydrogen peroxide 40 mL/L, scouring temperature 95 °C and alkali boiling time 150 min. The degumming rate was 72.14%. The degummed fibers were separated from each other in a single fiber state, compared to that the control samples were closely arranged by lots of fibers with rough surface caused by the presence of many non-cellulose components. The crystallinity increased from the control (43.53%) to final fiber (64.35%). The prepared bamboo shoot shell fiber is rich in cellulose (73.19%), which would provide some references for the future application and development of bamboo shoot shell fiber potentially and widely used in many aspects.