Curauá fibers from plants produced by tissue culture: thermal, mechanical, and morphological characterizations

Abstract Curauá fibers are already well known, mainly for their good mechanical properties and synergism with polymeric matrices. Thus, in this work, we produced the curauá plant by tissue culture (micropropagation technique) and extracted the fibers, which were characterized regarding moisture, ash, extractives, lignin, hemicellulose, holocellulose, and cellulose contents, besides infrared spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and evaluation of mechanical properties. Compared to other works, this curauá fiber presented a higher content of cellulose (77.2%) and lower hemicellulose content (6.8%). Another unique feature was the high crystallinity of the cellulose present in the fiber (73.53%), which reflected good thermal and mechanical properties. Thus, we show that the micropropagation technique is highly advantageous for the scale production of this fiber, in addition to producing a high-quality fiber for application in composites since it can better control the plant growth environment as well as macro and micronutrients.