Theme: digital textile

Preparation of cotton fiber products

The processing of cotton fibers and other cellulose fibers is very complex. It mainly uses  processes such as tanning, desizing, mercerisation and bleaching.

The first process involves moving the raw material over the flame of the gas burner, thanks to which the elementary fibers are removed.

The next step is desizing. In the case of synthetic sizing, it is usually washed in a water bath with sodium carbonate along with wetting additives. The PCC Group offers a range of wetting agents that are perfectly suitable for use in the textile industry. The POLIkol (PEG) series is a polyoxyethylene glycol group that, due to its structure, has solubilizing, softening, lubricating, antistatic and moisturizing properties. Polyoxyethylene glycols are characterized by very good biodegradability. These are also safe and non-toxic substances, therefore they reduce the environmental harmfulness of water baths. ROKAnol IT product series are ethoxylated fatty alcohols that ensure proper wetting of the cleaned surface and dispersion of dirt particles, which affects the high performance in removing dirt from fabric/knitwear and hard surfaces. These products are perfect ingredients of alkaline and acidic detergents used for professional washing and industrial cleaning. In turn, ROKAnol NL products are used in pre-treatment of fibers. They can be used to remove oil stains from fabrics and knitted fabrics created during industrial knitting and weaving processes. ROKAnol NL products also improve bleaching efficiency, which directly affects the improvement of dye capillarity in dyeing processes.

The next process is mercerisation, which is designed to increase the strength of fibers and provide them with the appropriate gloss.

The last stage of the initial preparation of cotton fibers is whitening. It consists in discolouring the natural colour caused by impurities on coloured fibers (e.g. in the case of flax) that could not be removed by washing. An example of such chemical compound is sodium hypochlorite, which can be used for bleaching flax, hemp and cotton knitwear fabrics. Thanks to sodium hypochlorite, a very high degree of whiteness is obtained. In order to improve the efficiency of bleaching, chemical agents are used before the start of the process to neutralize the alkaline residues in the fibers (e.g. hydrochloric acid).