Flattened Bamboo for Replacing Plastic Products – An Eco-friendly Material to Manufacture Clothes Hangers

Abstract

Plastic waste is increasing year by year, and its non-degradable nature is causing great damage to the environment. Bamboo is an environmentally friendly and sustainable material. Flattened bamboo green slices offer an alternative solution to plastic hangers due to their excellent bending-mechanical properties. This study elaborates a production technology for flattened bamboo green hangers (FBGH), as well as the status changes of bamboo and related quality issues during the production process. To reveal patterns of bamboo performance variation throughout the bamboo hanger processing, this study analyzes the temperature, moisture content, and thickness changes of bamboo during production. Additionally, key quality issues in the process include cracking, thickness uniformity, and paint film performance. The results indicate that the main quality issues were cracking and thickness uniformity of bamboo green slice. The splitting process significantly affected the thickness uniformity of the bamboo green slice. The cracking of flattened bamboo green slices was most occurred in the splitting, cold pressing, and drying processes. Optimizing the management of the process, improving slicing equipment, minimizing the time between slicing and cold pressing, and adjusting lacquer film process parameters can enhance bamboo processing performance.