Bamboo puts others in the shade

Geoff Maslen
October 19, 2010
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/bamboo-puts-others-in-the-shade-
20101018-16qog.html

The deadliest skin cancer, melanoma, kills 1200 Australians every year. But now clothing
made of bamboo fibre could offer protection from the sun's harmful UV rays.
Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing and most versatile grasses in the world. With a
growth rate of up to a metre a day, it can be eaten, made into bridges, beds and boats,
used to make shelters, floors and entire buildings — and even worn.
Research at Deakin University could result in bamboo fibres soon being turned into UV-
blocking clothing. Researcher Tarannum Afrin, of Deakin's Centre for Materials and
Fibre Innovation, has discovered the property that gives bamboo its UV-protective
characteristics.
A former textile engineer in Britain and a PhD student at the university's Institute of
Technology and Resource Innovation, Ms Afrin is developing a method of processing
bamboo she hopes will be environmentally friendly and allow the fibres to retain their
moisture-controlling and antibacterial properties.
She says bamboo is an emerging fibre for the textile and medical industries. It resembles
cotton in its unspun form, a puffball of light, airy threads. Although manufacturers have
claimed that bamboo products have an excellent appearance and feel and are UV-
shielding and moisture-absorbing, many of the claims have not been proved — until now.
"We know bamboo is 60 per cent better than cotton at blocking the sun's UV rays and my
research has identified the component in bamboo which gives it these qualities," Ms
Afrin says. "But when you make textile fibre out of bamboo the challenge is to retain the
structure that gives it its moisture wicking properties."
After obtaining a degree in textile technology from Dhaka University in Bangladesh, Ms
Afrin undertook a master's degree at Manchester Metropolitan University in Britain. She
later worked as a quality control officer in a Sydney garment manufacturer before starting
her PhD at Deakin last year.
"I developed my interest in bamboo during my childhood because there were many
bamboo gardens around my home," she says. "I heard a lot about bamboo's role as a
medicine and became fascinated by the plant's incredible nature."
Bamboo needs very little or no pesticide and irrigation to grow, Ms Afrin says. In many
Asian countries, high-rise buildings are erected using bamboo scaffoldings. Bamboo
shoots are also widely eaten in eastern countries for their succulent taste and food value.
"During 2008, when I was working in Sydney, I noticed bamboo material had started
appearing in the textile sector with some tempting labels attached such as 'green,
antimicrobial, outstanding wicking' [meaning moisture absorbing properties] and so on.
"But looking at the fibre structures in the bamboo textiles, I realised they were nothing
but conventional viscose or rayon. The manufacturers had only replaced wood with
bamboo as a raw material in the manufacturing process." Although raw bamboo has
unique properties, Ms Afrin says she doubted whether viscose material could retain those
properties. Also, the viscose processes use a considerable amount of harmful chemicals,
raising questions about the term "green".
After doing literature searches, she found most of the information and claims about the
properties of bamboo clothing were from people working in the textile industry with little
scientific evidence.
So she enrolled in a PhD at Deakin to conduct what she describes as "unbiased research
in a scientific manner to investigate those 'green' claims associated with bamboo textiles".
The research involves Australian-grown bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) collected in
Queensland. Ms Afrin says she discovered Australia even has a bamboo society — and it
was fascinating to see how the Australian species that originated from Asia behaved in
the Australian climate.
"Raw bamboo has numerous micro gaps or grooves like capillaries in its structure which
have been revealed by scanning electron microscopy and confocal microscopy," she says.
"It is because of this highly porous structure that bamboo can rapidly soak moisture. We
are trying to develop a new fibre-manufacturing technique that allows this unique
structure to be retained in the fibre which will offer improved wicking properties in
clothes such as sportswear."
Ms Afrin says manufacturers dissolve bamboo fibres in different solvents such as sodium
hydroxide solution and carbon disulfide and then regenerate it as cellulosic fibre. But this
is the same conventional procedure to make rayon and the only difference is that bamboo
replaces wood pulp as the raw material.
"Realising this, the US Federal Trade Commission has banned labelling bamboo-based
clothing as 'bamboo'."
As a result of her research, Ms Afrin identified the component in bamboo that gives it its
UV-protecting qualities. Using optical measurements, she compared raw bamboo with
common fibres such as cotton, 100 per cent cellulose and commercially available bamboo
yarns. She found that bamboo had the best UV-blocking ability among all the samples
and was at least 60 per cent better than cotton.
"We are now working to develop an eco-friendly manufacturing model to process
bamboo plants into fibre without losing their unique properties," she says. "We are using
bio-enzymes and mechanical force to disintegrate the lignin and hemicellulose from the
cellulose, which is a big challenge because our bamboo species is nearly 30 per cent
lignin, a cement-like gummy material."
Ms Afrin says that, unlike cotton, bamboo needs little water or irrigation to survive. It can
also be grown in poor soil. If planted in Victoria's barren lands, it would contribute
substantially to carbon reduction.
She says a hectare of bamboo can absorb up to 100 tonnes of CO2 and could contribute
to a green and sustainable Australia.