Environmentally friendly textile production: continuous pretreatment of knitted cotton fabric with normal temperature plasma and padding

Abstract

To reduce pollution in cotton knitted fabric production, this study aimed at developing a novel open width and continuous pretreatment process combining plasma, padding, and enzyme washing etc. In this process, plasma destroyed oily and waxy structures, padding provided the same functions of scouring and polishing, and enzyme washing gave deoxidization. Compared with conventional one bath alkali peroxide pretreatment process in pilot experiments, the quality of products from the novel pretreatment process is higher. The superiority was attributed to not generating microfibers on the surfaces of the products, integrity of the fiber microstructure of the products, and effective removal of oils and waxes. Water consumption is only 26.4% of that used in the conventional one-bath pretreatment. Also, pollutant production is reduced; chemical oxygen demand (CODCr), total nitrogen (TN), ammonia nitrogen (NH3–N), and total phosphorus (TP) of the developed process are lower by 73.18%, 87.09%, 60.64% and 60.81% respectively, because high pretreatment efficiency of novel process leads to a lower need for water and auxiliaries.