Microencapsulation technology is being more and more applied in the textile industry because microcapsules can confer additional properties to conventional fabrics. In this context, polysulfone microcapsules containing vanillin were prepared, and their morphology, thermal stability, and antibacterial properties against Staphylococcus aureus were assessed. The microcapsules were fabricated onto 100% cotton fabrics by a coating technique. The resistance of the coating to several washing cycles was studied, and the durability of the aromatic finishing was determined. Capsules were stable in the range between 20 and 100 °C, and they inhibited the growth of the bacteria at 37 °C for, at least, one week. Most of the capsules added to the fabric were flushed away between the first and second washing cycle; however, some capsules were still observed after the fifth washing. Finally, a survey was conducted in order to know how consumers perceived the aroma, before and after several washings. Survey data was statistically analyzed, and a model was built, which allowed the probability of maintained aromatic finishing for specific washing cycles to be predicted. Thus, this work sets the basis for further development of fabrics with antimicrobial activity and pleasant aromatic finishing based on polysulfone/vanillin capsules.

No abstract

No abstract

This paper discusses a method to operate polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) fibers based on outside-in pressurized ultrafiltration (pUF) membranes at high efficiency used as a pretreatment in seawater desalination. Backwash sequence was initially identified as the key contributor to the process efficiency yield. Backwash duration is reduced from 170 to 100 s, eliminating three redundant cleaning steps from an original sequence of five steps. Backwash frequency is decreased from once every 30 min to once every 90 min. These two optimizations result in an efficiency increase of 10% (from 88% to 97%). Thanks to this higher efficiency operation, it is possible to save 1.4 m 3 of ultrafiltrated water per day and filtering 96 extra minutes per day. A 14 days side by side validation is performed to validate the optimized conditions. In addition, the data is analyzed in order to prove that both backwashes have the same cleaning strength in reducing the trans-membrane pressure (TMP). A model to predict TMP evolution over time is presented and validated against the real plant performance during the validation period. This model is based on analyzing TMP increase during filtration cycle, TMP recovered during backwash cleaning and TMP recovered during chemical enhanced backwash (CEB).