Biomass fibers to be next generation of raw materials

08 Jul '10

2 min read

China's chemical fiber industry will put its focus on studies of biomass fibers and biochemical raw materials during the 12th Five-Year plan, in order to enhance industry standards by guiding the industry to use biotechnology.

The action plan is to transform production process of traditional recycled fibers, promote green processing and new fiber technology, as well as integrated technology.

Current focus is on the development of new solutions of cellulose fiber, polylactic acid, seaweed, chitin, polyhydroxyalkanoate fibers and other biomass fibers, as well as biological methods polyols, sugar-formaldehyde, ethylene and other monomers of biological materials and fibers.

Biomass fiber is a kind of fiber derived from renewable biomass, including natural animal and plant fibers, recycled fibers and synthetic fibers derived from biomass.

The development of biomass fibers can effectively expand textile raw materials, so as to make up shortage of domestic textile resources; meanwhile it could become an important tool for sustainable development of textile industry in responding to depleting oil resources.

China's chemical fiber industry has made some achievements in biomass industrial technology. Raw materials like polylactic acid, 1.3 propanediol, 1.4 butanediol and other biological polyols, single-uronic body materials, polymer and fiber are under rapid progress of research and development activity.

Significant breakthroughs have also been made in diversification of renewable raw material such as bamboo, hemp cellulose pulp and manufacturing technology of new solvent cellulose fibers.

At present, China's biomass fiber industry has achieved rapid development; the industry realized an annual capacity of 1.91 million tons in 2009, accounting for 77 percent of world's total capacity.

China has rich resources of biomass fibers, such as crop stalks, tree type resources (about 3 billion tons), marine shellfish, seaweed resources (about 2 billion tons), animal and plant protein fiber resources (about 30 billion tons), indicating a broad prospect of development and application.

Fibre2fashion News Desk