Cottonised Fibre from Linseed Stalks

Conventional flax processing aims to maintain long strands of bast fibre. It is labour intensive and most of the processing is done on antiquated machinery which has not been developed relative to the enormous investment and improvement in cotton processing machinery. There have been some efforts to “cottonise” flax by shortening it using cutting or enzymes but not linseed. However, the authors had observed that the component cellulose fibres of linseed were of similar fineness to cotton and could potentially be individualised for processing on high production open-end spinning equipment.

The aim of the project was to enhance the economic returns on bast fibre seed crops by turning the stalks into a source of high value fibre that could be processed on existing cotton machinery.