Anti-Crease Finish Of Cotton Fabrics With Polycarboxylic Acid Oligomer

N-hydroxyl acylamine resins,such as 2D resin,are widely used in textile industry as crease-resist finishing agent.However,cotton fabrics finished by them release formaldehyde during processing,storing and application.Formaldehyde is absolutely harmful to human healthy and environment.So developing newly non-formaldehyde finishing agent has already become a challenge of fabric finishing.In recent years,extensive efforts have been made to develop polycarboxylic acids finishing agents.1,2,3,4-butanetetracarboxylic acid(BTCA)has been acknowleged as the most effective crosslinking agent for cotton fabrics.However,the exceedingly high costs of BTCA prevented its application on a commercial scale. Citric acid(CA)is much cheaper,but it was not industrialized due to poorer washing durability.Alternatively,maleic acid(MAc)and poly(maleic acid)(PMA)are inexpensive and thus having good prospects on textile finishing industry.So a new copolymer containing MAc and methylacrylate(MA)monomers was synthesized via copolymerization in water.The synthesis conditions,such as ratio of monomer proportion and initiator concentration,reaction temperature and time,were investigated in detail in this study, because they affected bromine value,monmer conversation and thus the performance of the finishing agent.The optimized polymerization conditions were found as n(MAc):n(MA)=8:2,reaction temperature 105℃,reaction time 4.5h and m(initiator)/m(total monomers)=15%.Under these conditions,the product(COMM) can be used as a newly non-formaldehyde crease-resist finishing agent of cotton fabrics,and could distinctly improve wrinkle recovery angle of cotton fabrics.Because curing temperature,curing time,COMM concentration and SHP consumption would influence the crease-resist of cotton fabrics,these parameters were optimized as well when the COMM was utilized as the non-formaldehyde finishing agent of cotton fabrics.The performance of finished cotton fabrics was further increased by adding moderate amount of additives.For example,addition of 2wt%softening agent could improve the tear strength,and triethanolamine(TEA),glycerin and glycol could improve the breakage strength and whiteness.The esterification reaction of COMM and cotton fabric has been determined by acid-base titration and FT—IR measure,respectively.It has been found that the esterification reaction occurred between COMM and cellulose macromolecules of cotton fabrics.It is the ester bonds between the cellulose,which improved the wrinkle recovery angle of the fabrics.Experimental results revealed that COMM could distinctly improve wrinkle recovery angle of fabric,which was almost as good as BTCA and 2D resin.COMM is a kind of non-formaldehyde finishing agent compared with traditional finishing agents. Furthermore,low expense of COMM makes it a feasible non-formaldehyde finishing agent for textile industry.