The Utilization of Banana Fiber was carried out to make use of the banana fiber especially for paper industry. The experiments have been done by NaOH process under the temperature of 160° C for 2 hours. Amount of NaOH was varied at four levels 14%, 18%, 20%, 24% by weight of dried samples. It was then repeated by adding Anthraquinone 0.25%.
The prepared pulps were examined their Kappa No. and yield percentage. Other properties such as tensile strength tearing factor, bursting factor and folding endurance were also tested. It was found that the paper made from banana fiber performed satisfactory properties, however, the lignin residual was high and yield percentage was too low. It was also observed that the water content in the pulp was rather high, thus a long processing time and high power consumption were expected. Moreover the uniformity of fiber orientation can also be easily noticed. It was recommended that if one would like to explore in more details of making banana fiber paper, the banana fiber should be purely prepared first and then followed by paper making from these pure fibers. From such processes, the obtained papers should yield better uniformity and water contents could be minimized.