Characterization For Degradation Behavior Of Textile Fiber In Soil And Saline

Today, a large amount of textiles are disposed, it is not only a waste of source but also a challengeto environment. In order to make a contribution to deal with the textile waste, eight textile fibers, cotton,rayon,bamboo viscose, Modal, Lyocell, chitosan, wool and PLA(poly-lactic acid), which are regardedas degradable textile fibers, were assessed on their degradability under nature soil and saline conditions.The changes of micromorphology, colour, weight, tensile properties, crystallinity and component wereanalysed and a synthetically evaluation system for textile fiber was built. The present work wasconducted to comparatively study the biodegradability of eight textile fibers in natural soil and salineconditions, finally, the following conclusions have been draw:In nature soil, the comprehensive evaluation revealed the sort of eight fibers’ degradability wascotton>rayon>bamboo viscose>Modal>wool>Lyocell>chitosan>PLA.In saline, the sort of eight fibers’ degradability was rayon>cotton>wool>Modal>bambooviscose>Lyocell>chitosan>PLA.Bamboo viscose is regarded as the ecology fiber, but its degradability is lower than rayon andcotton, and its product process is as the same as rayon, so the ecology of bamboo viscose is inferior torayon, much less to the nature cotton fiber. So the view that believe bamboo viscose’s ecology is betterthan cotton and rayon is a kind of commercial activity.PLA is advertised as a degradable and ecology material, but both in soil and in saline, PLAshowed the lowest degradability. The PLA disposed in soil can’t degrade in a long term, which can alsocause the soil to harden. PLA is also regarded as an idea bio-medical fiber, however, from the angle of its degradation behavior in saline, PLA fiber’s long degradation period makes it not appropriate formedical suture.Compared two kinds of degradation conditions, natural soil is more active and the degradability isgreater than that in saline, due to the rich microorganism in soil. Rayon fiber exerted excellentdegradatbility, which benefit from its low crystallinity, low degree of polymerization and loosestructure. In soil, cotton degraded fastest, the degradability was superior to other fibers, even the rayonfiber. This is due to the evolution after millions of years. In regenerated cellulose fibers, fringedfolded-chain macromolecules fiber showed higher degradability than fringed fibril fiber and the fiberwith low shin-core ratio degraded better than that with high shin-core ratio fiber.No matter in soil or in saline, experiment results revealed that the degradation property ofpolyester structure fiber was not as good as cellulose and protein fiber. Chitosan fiber has similarmolecular structure with cellulose fiber, just one of the hydroxy is substituted by amido,but thedegradability was lower than cellulose fiber.