Water and Oil Repellent Finishing of Textiles by UV Curing: Evaluation of the Influence of Scaled-Up Process Parameters

Abstract

Abstract:In this work, various textile fabrics were coated with silicone and fluorocarbon-based resins by photo-curing using ultraviolet irradiation. A great number of large fabric samples were impregnated by padding with commercial finishing agents and then irradiated in air with a high power, semi-industrial UV source. The add-on of various finishing agents was kept low to reduce the treatment cost. White and dyed samples of different textile composition were treated and evaluated in terms of conferred repellency, yellowing, or color changes. Most relevant process parameters were investigated, utilizing the thermal process normally adopted at industrial level as reference. The results were statistically evaluated by ANOVA using Minitab 16 software, in order to identify the most influential parameters and to evaluate the real possibility of replacing the thermal treatment with UV curing.

An Experimental Investigation on Optimizing Liquid Repellency of Fluorochemical Urethane Finish and Its Effect on the Physical Properties of Polyester/Cotton Blended Fabric

“…Hybrid fluorochemical type block copolymers such as FU are effective stain repellents against water, as well as oil-based stains, even with successive washing cycles [5,6,11,[29][30][31][32]. Although the loss in hydrophobicity is reported in this study, the fabric treated with FU finish still has a fair to good hydrophobicity effect even after 30 laundering cycles, which makes it much more durable than its non-eco-friendly counterparts with C 8 and C 6 chemistry [4]. Likewise, the oil repellency data revealed a loss of the oleophobicity after laundering.…”

“…The loss of liquid repellency after laundering is common in fabrics treated with fluorocarbon-based DWRs due to their disturbed crystallinity in the aqueous laundering process [4,10,15,[25][26][27][28]. The washing process influences the orientation of the fluorinated side chains [5].…”

“…The loss of oleophobic performance was higher compared to the loss of hydrophobic performance in both drop and spray tests. It is only possible to achieve an oleophobic textile surface with fluorochemical-based DWRs due to their critical surface energy and it is even more difficult to retain the oleophobic performance, especially after laundering [4,5].…”

“…Since then, there have been several advances in the field of DWR technology. These are mainly divided into three categories: fluorocarbon-based, silicon-based, and hydrocarbon-based [3,4]. Fluorocarbon-based DWRs or fluoro-chemicals are the most popular choice due to their lowest surface energy [2,[5][6][7][8].…”

Recent Advances in Soft E-Textiles

“…Coating the surface of fabrics with nanoparticles can produce surfaces that are oil-and water-repellant, flame-retardant, antimicrobial, ultra-violet-light blocking, antistatic, wrinkle-resistant, and self-cleaning [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Figure 2 describes the broad spectrum of application of nanoparticles and the associated technologies in e-textiles.…”