Study On The Pretreatment Processes And Performances Of Linen And Linen/Cotton Fabrics

Nowadays people pay more attentions to life and health. "Green resources" which have the performances of environmental protection, sanitation, anti-bacteria and recycle using have been a focus of attention. Flax is natural cellulosic fiber and it is called "the Queen of Fibers " . It meets the requirement of nature and health care and wins the favors of people.Linen fabrics have the features of cool feel, comfort, elegance and properties of absorbency, nonallergenic, anti-bacteria, nonstatic, anti-ultraviolet and environmentally friendly. Flax is hard to be knitted because of its high crystallinity and orientation degree. Flax has much pectin, lignin and other impurities which lead to poor elongation, resilience, cohesiveness, softness and flexibility. Flax needs to be pretreated before knitting to improve the softness and knitability. For linen fabrics, scouring and bleaching are needed to remove the impurities and coloured impurities to assure good effects in the following processes. Besides, linen fabrics need softening treatment to reduce the scratchiness and make a nice hand.This thesis mainly makes a research about treatments of flax and linen fabrics with biological enzymes. Contrast to traditional chemical treatments, biological treatments have a gentle process that does little harm to flax and the fabric. The treatments will reduce the energy and water consumption effectively and save the cost. Besides, enzymes are proteins which do no harm to environment and the fabrics. So it is an ideal kind of treatment.In order to go on smoothly, the research is carried out by the following procedure: analysis of flax fiber→softening treatment on flax yarn→knitting→research on scouring and bleaching process of linen fabrics→research on softening treatment of linen fabrics.Firstly, flax yarns are scoured by alkali and enzymes separately, and then treated by softener. We find that the two treatments improve the knitability effectively.Secondly, linen fabrics are scoured with enzyme pectinase. In order to find out the proper scientific process, the factors including pH, temperature, dosage of pectase, treatment time are discussed. Then we make the orthogonal design with 4 factors, and each factor with 3 levels. According to the experiments results, pH and temperature are proved to be the most important factors.At last, cellulase is used to biosoften the linen fabrics. It is easily found that the cellulase treatment not only improve the hand, softness, drape and moisture absorption but also biopolish the fabrics.