Sisal carpets & area rugs

Sisal is a tough plant. It can thrive in drought conditions and in rough land with very little nutrition. For example, in 100 years of commercial sisal growing in Tanzania there has not been a year when there was a drought to kill sisal plants but there have been years when lack of rain devastated many other crops. Drought is the worst enemy of agriculture in many of the developing economies, which rely heavily on rain fed agriculture.
It has very few diseases which in most cases does not need any pesticides. It helps to stop soil erosion and captures moisture from the atmosphere. It can be planted any time of the year and harvested throughout the year. It even survives fire. There are very few commercially grown plants in the world with these qualities.
These are very serious advantages for an agricultural product especially in poor areas which are continually ravaged by drought, plant diseases, bush fires; where agriculture is the mainstay of their economies but is still primitive and has no protection of state subsidies or insurance.
The concentration of development has been in the utilization of the fibre. Only 2 percent of the plant is extracted as fibre. In the worldwide production of fibre of 300 000 tons, about 15 000 000 million tons is the biomass and short fibres called "waste".
Research has been going on to establish how best to exploit this huge quantity of biomass commercially.

 

Harvesting is carried out by hand. All lower leaves, standing at an angle of more than 45 degrees to the vertical, are cut away from the bole of the plant with a sharp flexible knife. After harvesting, the leaves are transported to a central factory and decorticated to extract the cortex of ribbon fibres that run along the length of the leaves. Extracted fibres are extensively washed during decortication, sun dried, brushed to separate and align the individual strands of fibre, graded and packed into bales.

 

Tanzania has registered considerable success in testing the use of sisal waste in generating electricity.
The ongoing pilot project titled "Cleaner Integral Utilisation of Sisal Waste for Bio-gas and Bio-fertilizers" show that the bio-gas which comes from the sisal residue can indeed produce high-voltage electricity.
A bio-gas plant at the Hale Sisal Estate in the Korogwe District in Tanga region has been able to yield 150 kilowatts of electricity which are enough to power a nearby hammer mill for making pulp.
Ms. Mayra Sanchez Osuna, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)'s Project Manager said the project has established the viability of using sisal waste to produce the biogas, electricity and bio-fertilizer.
She said the Hale activity "is the first demonstration project for the total utilization of this commodity in an economically feasible and friendly way adding that the results will be transferred to other interested sisal growing nations to replicate.
Observers say the findings will check the power divide existing between the rural and urban communities. Osuna said that the positive effect was leading to possibility of generating electricity in rural areas from locally available renewable sources.
More than half of the world population has no access to electricity and with the prices of fuel rising relentlessly the search for alternative energy becomes crucial.
Until recently only 2% of the sisal plant was considered to be useful, however recent researches show that the remaining 98 per cent have potential economic value including the generation of electricity from sisal waste which has been discarded in the past.
The Hale project is part of the efforts to find for alternative applications of sisal to counter the present slump in sisal fibre sell after the introduction of synthetic fibres in the international markets.
Patricia Scott, UNIDO representative in Tanzania said it became clear that the future of the sisal industry depend on the diversification of its uses.
Counting the advantages of sisal bio-gas utilization she said it adds value to the sisal waste, it solves environment problems related to the disposal of the waste, it generates energy to be used in the sisal industry, it produces a valuable biological fertilizer, and it reduces greenhouse gas emissions.