Fig. 1
From: Novel cattail fiber composites: converting waste biomass into reinforcement for composites
Schematic diagram for manufacturing compression molded composites using fibers from cattail leaves. a Green cattail plants. b 6–10 cm precut cattail leaves. c Alkali retting of cattail (90 °C, 4 h) 5% KOH. d Extracted cattail fibers after drying. e Entangled fiber bundles fed to carding machine. f Disentangling and combing of fibers via carding process. g Individualized, parallelized, and oriented fiber bundle. h Single cattail fiber. i Dead weight applied on fiber layers placed on template. j Non-woven mat impregnation by resin in VARTM.k Impregnated mat sandwiched between metal plates, release film, and silicon pad (compression molding)