Investigation Of Technologies Of Chloric-Free Scale-Stripping Of Wool

Wool is a kind of natural protein fiber and plays an important role in textile industry. Wool can be made into many different high-grade fabrics because of its excellent properties such as elasticity, hygroscopicity and heat preservation, etc.. However, there are some inborn disadvantages in wool structure. There is a scalelike structure on the surface of wool fiber which may cause the directional friction effect. As a result, the wool fabrics may have a high shrinkage rate in washing process. Because of the scale structure, wool fabrics have to be dyed at a high temperature, which will damnify the excellent handle of wool and increase energy consumption in dyeing process. In addition, the scale also causes the itch feeling and static property on wool clothes. To overcome these disadvantages, the scale of wool has to be peeled off. Nowadays, the widely used method in wool textiles pretreatment is chlorination. However, the waste water from chlorination process exists a lot of absorbable organic chloride(AOX), which may induce environment pollution. For those reasons mentioned above, it is necessary to investigate an effective scale-stripping technology with some chloric-free methods.This paper mainly discussed the optimized technics of atmospheric plasma technology and KMnO₄-TD scale-stripping process. According to the experiment, the process of atmospheric plasma treatment was: power of 40W, the carrier gas of Helium, tempreature of 100℃, the flow rate of helium of 10 LPM, and the samples treated twice at a speed of 2mm/s. The KMnO₄-TD treatment was: pre-treatment ( JFC 2g/L, liquor ratio 1: 40, the samples were treated 5min at 25℃, washed )→oxidation treatment (KMnO₄ 10%, liquor ratio 1: 40, NaCl 150g/L, pH=3, 40min at 60℃, washed )→deoxidization treatment (TD 20%, liquor ratio 1: 40,20min at 60℃; then washed at 60℃). According to the experiments, the atmospheric plasma process improved the wettability and dyeing ability of wool obviously. Besides, the other treatments which included the plasma process could also improve the wettability and dyeing ability of wool distinctly. The treated fabrics gained the "machine washable" property. The KMnO₄-TD treatment had an excellent result in scale stripping and improving the anti-felting property of wool fabrics. The treatments which included the KMnO₄ process could endue the treated fabrics with "machine washable" property.This paper shows that after scale-stripping treatment with chloric-free ways, the scale on the surface of wool fiber can be destroyed and the dyeing and anti-felting properties of wool can be improved distinctly. The non-chlorine scale-tripping technologies can not only improve the dyeing and anti-felting properties of wool, strip the scale structure but also avoid the pollution of chloric agent. The chloric-free scale-tripping technologies would have promising application in textile industry.