Abstract:

In view of the problems of energy consumption, environmental pollution and fabric strength loss during the conventional oxygen-alkali bleaching, biomimetic metal complexes porphyrin iron was used as a catalyst in low temperature peroxide bleaching of cotton fabric. The influences of catalyst concentration, pH value, H2O2 concentration, bleaching temperature and time on the whiteness and tensile strength index of the treated fabric were investigated by single factor and orthogonal tests. The optimized parameters are follows: mass concentration of porphyrin iron is 0.001 g/L, mass concentration of 30% H2O2 is 2 g/L, and bleaching at 60 ℃ for 45 min with a pH value of 12. The treated cotton fabric achieves the whiteness of 75.02 %, which is higher than that in conventional oxygen-alkali bleaching and tetraacetyl ethylenediamine (TAED) activation bleaching process. The tensile strength of the treated cotton fabric is 91.9 %, which is better than that in conventional alkaline oxygen bleaching process, but lower than that in the TAED activation bleaching process.

Key words: cotton fabric, low temperature bleaching, catalyst, porphyrin iron