The effect of size concentration, lubricant and plasticizer agents contents on cold sizing process performance of cotton warp yarns: modelling and optimization studies

Abstract

Cold sizing is the alternative to conventional hot sizing of cotton warp yarns due to this low-energy consuming character. This work aimed to evaluate the effects of size recipe ingredients on the cold sizing performance of cotton warp yarns. A three factors-three levels Box-Behnken experimental design and a response surface methodology were investigated to examine the effect of size concentration (40, 50, and 60 g/L), lubricant agent content (0%, 4%, and 8%), and plasticizer agent content (0%, 5%, and 10%) on sizing properties. In this work, the effect of experimental parameters was determined by using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. Therefore, a multi-objective optimization technique was used to optimize the output responses in terms of the maximum value of size cohesion power, the maximum value of size adhesion to cotton fibers, the maximum values of mechanical properties of sized cotton warp yarns, and the minimum value of hairiness of warp yarn after cold sizing. Finally, the experimental results are in good agreement with those obtained by SEM and FTIR analysis. In addition, desizing efficiencies and wettability results proved that the optimum size recipe was successfully removable from cotton fabrics by the desizing process in hot water.