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AssigneeThe Regents of the University of Michigan
InventorsAnshul SINGHAL, Mihaela BANU, Alan I. TAUB
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A stem breaking apparatus includes a roller having unevenly spaced radial projections and is useful in a method of extracting bast fibers from a plant stem. The roller is one of a pair of intermeshed counter-rotating rollers between which the plant stem is passed to break the woody core of the stem for separation from the bast fibers. Pairs of adjacent projections are angularly spaced by a larger amount that the individual projections of each pair. The rollers provide a larger support span than conventional stem-breaking rollers, resulting in gentler breaking of the woody core and preventing or eliminating the kinks and inter-fiber splitting associated with conventional stem breaking. Pre-compression of the stems before breaking offers further advantages.
A stem breaking apparatus comprising a roller having unevenly spaced radial projections.
A method of extracting bast fibers from a plant stem, the method comprising bending the plant stem by an amount sufficiently high to break a woody core of the plant stem and sufficiently low to prevent formation of kinks in a majority of the bast fibers surrounding the woody core.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.