Cleaner Approach for the Scouring Process of Polylactic Acid Piqué Knits in UV-O3

Today, attention is paid to clean technology to reduce the pollution of finishing processes in the textile industry. A novel and eco-friendly approach was developed for the scouring of 100% polylactic acid knits (with piqué structure) in a UV-O3 chamber (ultraviolet irradiation simultaneously with ozone gas exposure). The scouring process was obtained by using UV-O3 for 30 minutes on the knits which were pre-impregnated in a distilled water solution with a wet pick-up of 70 %, pressure of 1.1 bar, and speed of 2 m/min. Polylactic acid is the world’s first and only human-made fiber produced from 100% annually renewable resources such as sweet potato, not oil. The SEM image of the polylactic acid knits with magnifications of 30000 before the scouring process showed that there are nano-scale remains that can consist of dust, waxes, pigments, and other organic and inorganic impurities; on the other hand, after the UV-O3 process few nano-sized residues remains on the fibers and the surface of the fibers is smoother than the raw fibers. In addition, the whiteness index (WI) and tint (Tw) of knits in CIELAB space were evaluated for estimating the colorimetric characteristics of fabrics. The scoured polylactic acid piqué knit displayed the highest WI value and the lowest TW value (WI: 89.1, Tw: -0.2).

Cleaner Approach for the Scouring Process of Polylactic Acid Piqué Knits in UV-O3 Keywords:

Polylactic acid , Cleaner strategy , Scanning electron microscopy , Scouring , Nano-scale residues