Medicinal plants are the product of natural drug discoveries and have gained traction due to their pharmacological activities. Pathogens are everywhere, and they thrive in ideal conditions depending on the nutrients, moisture, temperature, and pH that increase the growth of harmful pathogens on surfaces and textiles. Thus, antimicrobial agents and finishes may be the solution to the destruction of pathogens. This review article presents an analysis of various aspects of producing antimicrobial finishings, the microorganisms, their mechanism of attachment to natural and synthetic fibre, the effect of microbial growth, and the principle and mechanism of the microbial activity of the medicinal plants. Furthermore, the extraction methods, qualitative and quantitative phytochemical evaluations of antimicrobial efficacy, and developments of antimicrobial treated textiles using various agents are covered in this review.

Hydroentanglement is a versatile and relatively little explored method of bonding the fibrous web using high-pressure water jets. These nonwoven structures have an extensive range of applications -for example, wipes, carpet backing, filters, sanitary, medical dressings, and composites. Such applications require certain functional characteristics in hydroentangled structures, besides basic properties, which are required to be engineered by judicious optimization of the hydroentanglement process. In this study, a number of hydroentangled structures have been produced based on Taguchi's experimental design technique by varying the process parameters: namely, feed rate and water jet pressures. The simultaneous effect of more than one parameter has been investigated on the dimensional and mechanical properties of hydroentangled fabrics. These process parameters are then empirically related with the fabric properties using the multiple regression technique. The influence of jet pressure was found to be significant on the fiber orientation characteristics of the hydroentangled fabrics.

A soy protein-based water-soluble binder composition for natural fiber nonwoven fabric is discussed in this paper. Before applying to viscose fibers, foam decay studies of soy protein and acrylic binders are carried out and results are compared. The biobinder (soy protein and sodium dodecyl sulphate modified soy protein) composition effectively binds natural fibers in a nonwoven fabric by foam application method. Such fabrics are widely used for industrial wipes and non-reusable products such as diapers, sanitary napkins, bandages, etc. The mechanical and thermal properties of viscose fabric bonded with soy protein bio-binder are compared with the same fabric produced with commercially applied acrylic binder. Scanning electron microscope was used to confirm the bonding of the viscose fiber with the bio-binders.

The mechanics of nonwoven fabrics is largely dependent on fiber properties, and other physical factors such as structural arrangement and degree of entanglement of the fibers. In this study, modeled and experimental stress–strain behaviors of uniaxially loaded hydroentangled nonwoven fabrics have been analyzed and compared. The theoretical values from the model were deduced from the measured properties of micro-samples, namely, fiber volume faction, orientation distribution and mechanical properties. Testing of the micro-samples was performed on a Deben Microtest Module fitted in the FEI Quanta 200 Scanning Electron Microscope. The experimental stress–strain results show that the structure is in the linear region when the modeled results approach the highest specific stress. Also, the theoretical models highly overestimate the specific stress of the hydroentangled nonwoven fabrics. The results show that the application of the model was limited in predicting tensile stress. Furthermore, a trapezoid method was used to quantify the actual deformation energy from the stress–strain graphs up to the ultimate tensile strength. The theoretical deformation energy was estimated and compared to the experimental values. The model was subsequently modified to improve its predictive capability.

The hydroentanglement process is highly energy intensive compared to other methods of manufacturing nonwoven fabrics. This paper presents an exploratory study on optimizing the usage of hydroentanglement energy so as to lower the processing cost. The experiments were based on a Box-Behnken experimental design (BBD) and multivariate linear regression analysis to model the tensile strength as response to variables. Three variables were selected, namely fabric area weight (150-400 g/m 2 ), machine speed (5-15 m/min) and waterjet pressure (40-200 bars). These parameters were employed in two sets of experiments to achieve maximum tensile strength of viscose nonwoven fabrics. The first experiment was conducted using higher waterjet pressures of 100, 150 and 200 bars, which were proved to have exceeded the optimum levels. The second experiment was conducted at relatively lower waterjet pressures of 40, 60 and 80 bars. The results on tensile strength were analyzed using the SYSTAT 10 software package and response surface plots were prepared. The linear, quadratic and interactive effects of the main variables were shown to be significant. Interactions amongst the variables were found to have either a synergistic (positive) or offsetting (negative) relationship with the fabric tensile strength. The interactions involving machine speed were predominantly offsetting. The 400 g/m 2 area weight fabric produced at 80 bars of waterjet pressure achieved a fabric tensile strength of 222 cN, which compared favorably with that of 232 cN obtained at 200 bars of waterjet pressure. In this exploratory study using BBD, linear, quadratic and interactive effects were observed to be significant and the usage of hydroentanglement energy was successfully optimized. This indicates the possibility of achieving high fabric strength but at lower waterjet pressures; in other words, by employing low hydroentanglement energy and thereby minimizing the processing cost.