PEMANFAATAN LIMBAH DAUN NANAS SEBAGAI ALTERNATIF BAHAN BAKU CAMPURAN SERAT KAPAS UNTUK PEMBUATAN BENANG OE

ABSTRACT Pineapple is one of the plants that is widely grown on Indonesian plantations. From 2018 to 2022, total pineapple production in Indonesia was 2,149,733 tons yearly. Pineapples are not only used for the fruit but the pineapple leaves can be processed into something with higher economic value. One use of pineapple leaves is as an alternative raw material for textile thread. The process of making thread from pineapple begins with making pineapple fiber. Making pineapple fiber is done by extracting pineapple leaves, and then carrying out a traditional spinning process. In Indonesia, there is still no use of pineapple fiber as raw material for textile yarn in an industrial-scale production process. Therefore, this research aims to assess the suitability of pineapple fiber as a raw material for textiles. In this research, pineapple fiber was mixed with cotton fiber and the production effectiveness was observed. It was found that a mixture of pineapple fiber and cotton fiber with a composition of 45%:55% had the best effectiveness compared to fiber compositions of 14%:86% and 29%:71% with the lowest average number of broken threads, namely 16.33 in 60 minutes. However, the number of thread breaks is still relatively high so it is considered not yet effective or the OE thread production process is not yet running smoothly.