The cold-pad-batch technology is applied mainly in the pretreatment and dyeing of cellulosic fabrics and shows lots of advantages such as technique simplicity, low energy consumption and reduced sewage emission especially for productions of multi item and short run. The degumming process of mulberry silk fabrics with “cold-pad-batch” method using tea sapogenin was studied in this paper. The effects of a few factors such as concentration of tea sapogenin, NaOH and Na2S2O4 as well as time on the whiteness and weight loss of fabric obtained: NaOH 8g/L, tea sapogenin 6g/L, Na2S2O4 5g/L, Lamepon A 2g/L, JFC 1g/L, Na2SiO3 2g/L and batching time 18h. After degumming with “cold-pad-batch” process, the whiteness and weight loss of mulberry silk fabrics were 69.3 and 22.8%, respectively. The handle of fabric was soft. Compared with traditional soap soda boiling degumming process, the properties of mulberry silk fabrics degummed with “cold-pad-batch” method using tea sapogenin can meet the requirement of weight loss, whiteness, strength and show some benefits such as low energy consumption and water saving and low toxicity. The energy consumption will be 25% lower than that of soap soda boiling degumming process.

Optim fiber is a kind of modified wool fiber by physical stretching of fine wool fiber, which changes the crimp ratio of the original wool. The effect of the soaping parameters, such as caustic concentration, temperature, treating time on Optim fiber crimp ratio was studied. The results showed that under the same caustic concentration, the crimp ratio is distinctly increased along with the temperature increase when the temperature is under 75 oC. However, when the temperature was higher than 75 oC, the crimp ratio started to reduce fast. Under the same soaping temperature, the caustic concentration change did not have the obvious effect on the crimp ratio change. When the temperature was above 80 oC, the crimp ratio reduced as a whole along with the caustic concentration. The change of the curl ratio was not obvious at the same caustic concentration within 20 min. However, the curl ratio reduced slowly with increasing the soaping time. At the same soaping time, the curl ratio of fibers reduced with increasing concentration of soaping. It could provide some technical reference for dyeing of optim fiber.