The Impact of In‐situ Fabric Surface Energy on Dehydration of Fabrics

Abstract

Reducing liquid surface tension is widely used to increase the efficiency of the centrifugal dehydration in textile wet processing. However, increasing the dehydration efficiency by decreasing fabric surface energy is seldom studied. In this work, the impact of in situ fabric surface energy on residual moisture content (RMC) of fabrics in the dehydration processes was investigated. Different types of fluorocarbon surfactants including cationic, anionic, nonionic and amphoteric were adopted as additives in this study. The liquid surface tension and RMC were efficiently decreased when fluorocarbon surfactants were used. Notably, a cationic fluorocarbon surfactant displays similar surface tension but distinct dehydration efficiency. The in situ fabric surface energy was evaluated by measuring the n-octane contact angle on the cotton fabric surface under the surfactant solution using the captive bubble method. It was found that the cationic fluorocarbon surfactant system gave the lowest fabric surface energy, which was probably because cationic fluorocarbon surfactants are easier to adsorb onto the surface of cotton fabric to form a fluorocarbon layer. The chemical composition ( 19 F, 12 C and 16 O) analysis of the cotton fabric surface by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirms the hypothesis.

Effects of Spacer Length on the Surface Properties of Cationic Gemini Fluorosurfactants

“…Currently, gemini surfactants have been widely used in many areas such as daily chemical, pharmaceutical and textile industries etc. [6][7] The nature of the spacer group (length, flexibility, chemical structure) has been shown to be the most important factor in determining the solution properties of gemini surfactants. Study of the influence of gemini surfactants spacer with element of N, S, F to their properties has been widely reported [8][9][10][11].…”