Investigation On The Degradability Of Polyester/Cotton Fabric

At present, the environment pollution on earth becomes more and more serious,the issue that how to deal with wasted textile has attracted people’s great attention. Inthe processing of dealing with waste textile, natural fibers have good biodegradableproperties and there are some researches on this. However, there are little reports onthe degradability of synthetic fiber and the synthetic fiber fabric in the soil. So,exploring the degradability of the polyester/cotton fabric is very necessary.This subject analyse the regular and influence of the degradation degree on thetwo kinds of fibers in the polyester/cotton fabric and the fabric structure under thealkali treatment, soil treatment conditions. Firstly, the polyester/cotton fabric wastreated by alkali solution under various alkali treatment concentration, temperatureand time to analyze the appearance of the fabric morphology, fabric weight, fabricstrength, polyester fibers content and cotton content in the fabric before and after thetreatment. Moreover, the morphology and the chemical structures of the fabric beforeand after alkali treatment were tested using the electron microscope observation andinfrared spectra tester, respectively. Then, the alkali treated fabric and untreated fabricwere buried in the natural soil, so as to study the degradation process and analyze theinfluences of landfill time on fabric weight, morphology, strength and chemicalstructure; The influences of alkali treatment and soil conditions on the degree of thefabric degradation was compared. At the same time, the influences of the different soilconditions (acid soil, alkaline soil, impurity soil, and damp soil), different soil layerthickness, different temperature and humidity atmospheric environment and differentfabric structures on the degradation degree of the polyester/cotton fabric were tested.Lastly, comprehensively analyzing on the degree of degradation of polyester/cottonfabric was done.The results showed that alkali treatment concentration had the biggest influenceon the degradation or solution of polyester/cotton fabric, and could achieve thegreatest degree of degradation or solution. Compared with soil degradation ofpolyester/cotton fabric, polyester fiber degradation in the polyester/cotton fabric under alkali treating was serious, but the degradation of the polyester/cotton fabric undersoil conditions was slow, especially for the polyester fiber in the polyester/cottonfabric; For the soil degradation degree of untreated fabric and alkali treatedpolyester/cotton fabric in the natural soil conditions, it was showed that the fabricssample degradation degree increased with time increasing, but the degradation degreeof alkali treated polyester/cotton fabric was higher than that of untreatedpolyester/cotton fabric. And the soil degradation degree of alkali treatedpolyester/cotton fabric increased with alkali treating concentration. Moreover, it isobtained that cotton fibers of polyester/cotton fabric had a fast degradation in initialsoil degradation of polyester/cotton fabric through the two component method test onthe fabric. It is got that the soil degradation order of the same polyester/cotton fabricin the different soil natures was following as: impurity soil﹥alkaline soil≧damp soil﹥natural soil≧acid soil; The degradation degree of the same polyester/cotton fabricunder the condition of10cm soil thickness was higher than that of in30cm soilthickness; For different atmospheric environmental conditions (different sensons), theconditions of high temperature and high wet climate (in summer) was moreadvantageous to the degradation of polyester/cotton fabric. For the polyester/cottonplain fabric and twill fabric, the latter had a high degradation degree.