Eco-Friendly Cotton/Linen Fabric Treatment Using Aqueous Ozone and Ultraviolet Photolysis

Kyohei Miyano,Yosuke Ishikawa,Tsuyoshi Ochiai,Noritaka Kimura,Kengo Hamada,Yasuyuki Tsuchida,Toshinari Nagura

doi:10.3390/catal10111265

Abstract

Chemicals for the scouring and bleaching of fabrics have a high environmental load. In addition, in recent years, the high consumption of these products has become a problem in the manufacture of natural fabric products. Therefore, environmentally friendly, low-waste processes for fabric treatment are required. In this paper, we discuss the bleaching of fabrics using advanced oxidation processes (AOP). These processes use electrochemically generated aqueous ozone and ultraviolet (UV) irradiation to achieve bleaching. However, colour reversion often occurs. In this study, we suppressed unwanted colour reversion by treatment with rongalite. After treatment, changes in fabric colour were determined by measuring the colour difference and reflectance spectra. The best bleaching effect was obtained when ozone and UV irradiation treatments were combined, achieving results similar to those of a conventional bleaching method after 60 min of UV irradiation. In addition, the AOP treatment resulted in the simultaneous scouring of the fabric, as shown by the increased hydrophilicity of the fabric after AOP treatment. Thus, this AOP process represents a new fabric bleaching process that has an extremely low environmental impact.

Highlights

In the manufacture of natural fabric products, such as cotton and linen, alkaline chemicals and surfactants are used to remove contaminants
An alternative to conventional bleaching with chemicals is advanced oxidation processes (AOP), which combine the treatment of hydrogen peroxide or aqueous ozone generated by electrolysis [5,6,7,8,9] with irradiation by ultraviolet (UV) light [10,11,12] and oxidation treatment using enzymes or microwave heating [13,14]
We developed a bleaching technology with a low environmental load that combines aqueous electrochemically generated ozone and UV irradiation for the combined bleaching and scouring of cotton and linen

Summary

Introduction

In the manufacture of natural fabric products, such as cotton and linen, alkaline chemicals and surfactants are used to remove contaminants (i.e., scouring). An alternative to conventional bleaching with chemicals is advanced oxidation processes (AOP), which combine the treatment of hydrogen peroxide or aqueous ozone generated by electrolysis [5,6,7,8,9] with irradiation by ultraviolet (UV) light [10,11,12] and oxidation treatment using enzymes or microwave heating [13,14]. These methods do not use environmentally persistent agents and have low energy costs. Oxidative bleaching with AOP allows the omission of the refining step used in conventional methods, again resulting in a more environmentally friendly method

Methods

Results

Conclusion