Heger.Hulda Natural Fibre Consultants

27/05/2025

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13/11/2024

H**p myths examined closely..

08/11/2024

In the wake of the canonization of the h**p plant as a world-saving miracle plant, even well-meaning people cannot escape a certain amount of irritation from negligently or intentionally spreading nonsense. I have been working with h**p professionally since 2006, having worked intensively with flax

02/11/2024

H**p myths examined closely - h**p myth buster

Myth 1 of 11: H**p produces on the same area more Oxygen than forest

In the course of the canonization of the h**p plant as a world-saving miracle plant, even a well-meaning person (I have been working with h**p professionally since 2006, having worked intensively with flax for the previous 20 years) cannot escape a certain annoyance from negligently or intentionally spreading nonsense. The intention of the spreaders of such outrageous nonsense is not always clear, but in the last few months there have been some indications that, in addition to a number of unsuspecting and unconditional advocates, right-wing populist multipliers are also becoming active, whose goal can actually only be to create general uncertainty .

So here are at least a few thoughts on a somewhat more well-founded discussion of theses that assume that h**p produces oxygen superior to other plants, hyped in German and international:

One hectare of h**p produces as much oxygen as 25 hectares of forest.
One hectare of h**p produces 25% more oxygen than one hectare of forest.
An acre of h**p produces 35% more oxygen than an acre of forest.
One ton of h**p produces two tons of oxygen
First of all, it is important to determine WHAT should actually be compared: a h**p crop on a Spanish marginal yield site with chronic water shortage compared with a tree-covered alluvial clay near groundwater in the Po Valley or in the Amazon Basin?
A h**p stand on a moist, nutrient-rich Hungarian fen with a forest near the tree line in the high mountains?

A fair comparison can only be made between areas with similar conditions in terms of precipitation, soil conditions and temperatures. It is therefore obvious to compare the summer cultivation of h**p with an agroforestry, for example a short-rotation hardwood plantation.

The quantitative ratios in such a comparison are not surprising: Short rotation plantations on light to medium soils in Germany have around 10 t to 15 t per hectare AND year of air-dry harvestable growth (15% residual moisture), h**p rarely reaches on those grounds more than 10 t to 12 t t growth per hectare and year (12% residual moisture).
Slightly less effective than short-rotation plantations are commercial forests with an annual increase of 8 t to 12 t of dry matter (15% residual moisture) (averaged across all age groups). However, unlike h**p on agricultural land, commercial forests are not fertilized and naturally grow on less good soil.
The annual increase in mass of forest and h**p is therefore at a comparable level. The reason for this are natural laws that even “miracle plants” cannot escape - especially photosynthesis:

6 H2O + 6 CO2 are in equilibrium with C6H12O6 + 6 O2

Based on a standard chemical amount of 1 mole, the equation means that during photosynthesis, 108 g of water and 264 g of carbon dioxide are converted into 180 g of sugar and 192 g of oxygen.

The storage of 1000 kg of carbon dioxide in around 680 kg of sugar (and later starch or cellulose, protein, fat, etc.) releases around 720 kg of oxygen. Based on the amount of growth, this means that one ton of h**p can at best bind 1.47 t of carbon dioxide or release 1.05 t of oxygen.

If the mass increase of h**p and wood under the same environmental conditions is of a similar magnitude, the release of oxygen will also level off at approximately the same level.
This clearly refutes the claim that a unit area of h**p per year releases more oxygen than a unit area of forest in the same time.

By the way: before the idea of a fundamental superiority of h**p over other crops arises: wheat achieves 10-18 t/ha DM, corn 15-26 t/ha DM, bamboo 10-20 t/ha and miscanthus 10-20 t/ha in individual cases or under particularly favorable conditions, the yields can be even higher.

28/11/2022

The long way from h**p field to yield structure analysis in 20 minutes - sorry: comment in german

Der Weg vom Hanf-Feldversuch bis zur Ertragsstrukturanalyse

17/03/2018

Biological Degumming of Bast Fibers – some essential Facts

Strictly speaking, the process of biological degumming of various bast fibers such as flax, h**p and ramie is just as old as their use by mankind. Thousands of years ago, at times of only - more or less - controlled separation of fiber-associated gums from the cellulosic textile fibre by ubiquitous microorganisms (usually bacteria or fungi), it was difficult to obtain spinnable fibers at all. Especially in flax harvesting and processing the biological degumming process, in the truest sense of the word "natural", has been developed very well.

Flax

The so-called dewretting takes for degradation of bastfiber gums advantage of saprobionts, which occur to billions on every square meter of arable land,.
These microorganisms, living from dead organic substance, metabolize gums already in the course of the harvest. This leads to the environment friendly effect, that a part of the nutrients incorporateded by the flax plants during growth are directly passed back to the soil from which they come from. According to this the nutrient export from the agricultural grounds is minimized.

The main disadvantage of this biodegumming method is the high weather dependence of the dewretting, which leads from time to time to severe crop failures.
The saprobionts active for dewretting are predominantly fungi, which work very fast in a warm and moist environment. Their digestion can only be stopped by a complete drying of the flax straw. However, if raining period does not end and there is no time window for machinework in the fields available, the flax over-retts. In extreme years the flax lose that much of textile quality that it is not worth baling and transportation.

The situation is different if using water retting for biological degumming of flax. This digestion process was the historical standard method for producing high quality flax fiber until the 1950's. In the Belgian river Leie i.e. bundled flax straw has been biologically degummed for centuries. Just as legendary as the quality of those flax was the color of the river water: golden yellow, which gave the Leie the nickname “Golden River”.

In contrast to dewretting, the flaxstraw intended for waterretting was left on the field only for a few days until dried. The dry flax straw was decapsulated and stored under roof. Batchwise the bundled flax straw was put in boxes flown through by the Leie river. Depending from season and following water temperature the retting boxes remained some 15 to 60 days in the river. Unloading boxes and natural drying of the bundles in typical “chapels” stopped the digestion process.
A lot of nutrients from the fields got lost to the river and the North Sea in this procedure, whilst gaining the flaxseeds in the capsules delivered on the other hand a considerable amount of the best food and seeds.

Today industrial waterretting of flax is operating only in Egypt and China. In Egypt this is not because of a complete exploitation of the process advantages, but rather because a homogeneous dewretting is not feasible under the local wheather conditions.
The waterretting nowadays is not carried out in rivers or ditches but is operating in large concrete basins, where Saprobionts, mainly bacteria, established in the retting liquor and on plant stems, perform the digestion. This lasts - depending on the season - up to 15 days and ends with the draining of retting liquor to stop the biological degumming.
Close to the retting bassins you find large open spaces allow sun-drying of the flax easily within a very few days. This avoids coming up of uncontrolled further retting by fungi.
The often obsolete retting facilities in Egypt do not meet european requirements of process control, sustainability and environmental protection, but represent a low-risk digestion process for beeing not depending on difficult climate conditions.
This risk minimization is related with a high amount of manual labor and not insignificant gaseous and fluid emissions.
Investments in an optimized control of the waterretting process, its mechanization and contemptionary wastewater treatment or a closed water and nutrient cycle can not be afforded by the actors there at present. This is all the more regrettable, as the biological degumming of flax by waterretting under the Egyptian weather conditions offers a much greater potential for optimization than the technologically advanced dewretting in western Europe.

H**p

The biological degumming of h**p by dewretting, whether as stems in parallel position (analogous flax) or as pre-shredded material mixture of -more or less -shredded stalk parts and exposed fibers works homogeneously only in exceptional cases.
This due to the natural structure of the h**p stalk. Therefore h**p fibers from dewretting are not available for advanced textile purposes.
The traditional waterretting of h**p, as it is occasionally carried out in Hungary, for example, suffers from suboptimal raw materials and obsolete digestion and/or processing technology. The h**p fibers thus obtained are not even spinable to medium not to mention fine h**p yarns.
From China a lot of patents (with sometimes dubious inventive height), dealing with the biologically or biochemically degumming of h**p are known. Whether these patents are used in local industrial plants with regard to real biological degumming can not be assessed from this point. Anyway it is fact, that the finest h**p yarns currently available on the market come from China.
In Europe convincing results regarding textile properties of h**p fibres are provided only by laboratory and small-scale plants.
For large-scale implementation, which requires a high level of construction efforts, an holistic approach regarding by-products as well as closed water- and nutrient-circuits neither public nor private investors currently are ready for.

European Nettle and Ramie

Although both types of nettle, european nettle (Urtica dioca) and ramie (Boehmeria nivea) can generally be degummed by dewretting, the fibers obtained by subsequent mechanical decortication are of inadequate textile quality. On the other hand, excellent qualities of nettle and ramie fibers are obtained when decortication of the cuticle takes place in the freshly harvested state (ramie) or the (inner) wooden part of the stem remains integer during separation of the fiber(european nettle).
In the case of ramie, intercultural and economic-psychological barriers increase obstacles to large-scale implementation of small-scale european experience already mentioned in the previous paragraph. In China, for example, scientific and/or technical know-how and economic decision-making competence are often decoupled, so that investment advocacy by engineers towards corporate management can lead to considerable career risks. In addition, fast money is usually given the advantage of only on long-term profitable, yet sustainable and ecologically excellent investments.

Currently there are increasing numbers of reports that, especially in China, h**p and ramie are being biologically degummed on industrial scale. If one goes to the bottom of this news, you will always find procedures in which non-living organisms, but biotechnologically produced enzymes or specific enzyme mixtures act on the bast fibers for a few hours under conditions set exactly with temperature and process chemicals. However, this is not a biological but at most a biochemical process!

In addition the innovation value is quite limited, because trials with such enzymes were done in Europe since the late 1970’s in order to minimize the risks of flax harvest and to produce high quality spinnable fibers from unretted scutched flax.
Interestingly, enzymatic processes have not been successful in flax or linen production on straw and fibre level, but very successful in finishing industry. This is mainly due to two reasons: Firstly, enzymes in the required amounts are not really cheap, and secondly, the enzymatically treated fibers in terms of fineness and / or strength are not from that exceptional quality as biologically degummed flax fibres.

Whether there is an incredible improvement in price / performance ratio of enzymes in China or unlimited availabillty of that high quality h**p or ramie rawmaterials so it does not depend on the last 10% quality, may still reamin a mystery remain of the Empire of the Middle for some time.
However, it can already be said that treatment of bastfibers with artificially applied enzymes is NOT a biological, but a biochemical process. In this respect, it is important to emphasize that such a process is not conceptually green washed but will be referred to in the future as what it really is: a biochemical degumming.

11/01/2016

Ramie (Boehmeria nivea) - very first initial trials in Germany

Some 120 years ago Ramie (Boehmeria nivea) was grown and processed in southern Germany as well as close to Berlin capitol. This because there were a few decades with a close to subtropical climate, especially with not that strong winters. If frosts pe*****te grounds more than some 5 cm risk of damage to Ramie roots occurs.
Therefore our own trials with Ramie (Mielsdorf /Northern Germany 2003 to 2013, Nettelsee/Northern Germany 2012 ff., Kiedrich/Rheingau 2012 ff. ) were covered with organic matter to protect roots in winter.
Nevertheless, it was less the climate, but rather the very costly fiber processing which has led to a decline of the German Ramie industry.

Of course the number of Ramie harvests/cuttings in central europe is much lower than in the heartland of Ramie, in China. This because growing starts quite late in March/April and allows first cutting only in June/July. Some 10 weeks later usually a second cutting was possible. The extraordinary late start of winter in 2015 allowed a third cutting, but at insufficient plant length.

Our Ramie usually requires irrigation because the rains in phases of maximum dry matter production are insufficient for high yields.In addition we have learned, that under conditions of long daylight Ramie prefers some partial shadow. Therefore we prefer to grow Ramie beside walls or in shadow of Miscanthus or fibre H**p.

The yield data are to be valued with big care. Over the years, nevertheless, the whole dry matter of 1.4 to 2 kg/sqm is relatively stable. (cutting height some 10 cm above ground level)
From that leafs and plant tops require some 0,25 to 0,4 kg/sqm dry matter. The wooden core is some 0,65 to 1,05 kg/sqm. Degummed Ramie fibre occurs by 0,08 to 0,18 kg/sqm. These fibre yields are less in relation to flax fibre yields, but from our experience the harvested Ramie fibres (as elementary fibre cells) have much lower fibre diameters and a much better l/d (= length / diameter) ratio than Flax fibre (as technical fibre bundles).

Because the competitiveness of Ramie vs. Flax and H**p is - beside suitable harvesting equipment – is limited by the costly fibre extraction and fibre degumming, in parallel to agricultural trials a new processing line for Ramie hast o be developed. This starting from more or less automatic selfriding harvesting equipment for cutting, seperating leaves, cuticula and wooden core in one step. On next stage a biological process has to replace the todays chemical process of degumming. For that an holistic approach is absolutely necessary, because the environmental impact of Ramie production has to be as low as possible in order to build up an ecofriendly and economic alternative to cotton.