The Effect of Spinning Methods on the Quality of Kenaf Yarn

Abstract

The quality of kenaf yarn is very important for its application in different industries and this makes it very important for farmers and processors to target quality production cum production rate. Meanwhile, manual spinning of kenaf fibres has been the oldest and the most common method of kenaf yarn production in Nigeria until the development of a kenaf spinning and reeling machine for small scale farmers. To compare the quality of yarn production from manually and mechanically spun kenaf yarn, three varieties of kenaf fibres were spun with the production rate of 1.23m/hr, 0.81m/hr and 0.97m/hr when spun manually and 18.8m/hr when spun mechanically for Tianung 2, Cuba 108 and Ifeken DI 400 respectively. For the mechanically spun yarns, a spinning and reeling speeds of 90 and 80 rpm combination were used for the production while the different spinning experts were selected to also spin the same varieties of kenaf fibres. The spun yarn samples using the different methods were subjected to mechanical test for the determination of the stress, strain, young modulus, tensile strength, extension which were used to determine the quality ratio of the the different yarns. It was discovered that the methods of spinning yarn affects the quality of spun yarn and the use of the kenaf spinning and reeling machine to produce a better quality of yarn with Ifeken DI 400 (148%), Tianung 2 (91%) and Cuba 108 (67%) while the quality ratio for manually spun yarn are Ifeken DI 400 (41%), Tianung 2 (49%) and Cuba 108 (27%).