Study of the kenaf fibres spinnability: Influence of the percentage of kenaf cotton mixture on the yarn properties

This paper presents the results of the first kenaf spinning attempt in Tunisia. Indeed, kenaf fibers are rigid and lack of cohesion that makes their spinning difficult and a challenge. So, this paper describes the possibility of spinning different blends of kenaf/cotton fibers using open end spinning machine. Five different blends of kenaf/cotton (M1:10/90, M2:20/80, M3:30/70, M4:40/60, and M5:50/50) were considered. The higher kenaf content in the blend make spinning process difficult and even impossible. The produced yarns were characterized to evaluate their mechanical properties and compare it to similar yarn performances. These blends gave different yarn counts varying from 41.86 to 69.16 tex, tenacity of 8.80 cN/tex to 10.07 cN/tex, while elongation at break of 7% to 8.93%. The results proves that kenaf/cotton 40/60 blend ratio presents the better mechanical properties and regularity with 8.80 cN/tex for tenacity and 7.68% for elongation with good regularity index Ireg = 1.25.