Liquid Repellency and Durability Assessment: A Quick Technique

Abstract

Water and oil repellency are among the most common functional properties that need to be assessed for protective clothing, both during development and production. There are established techniques for the evaluation of these properties, but they are time consuming. Durability assessment requires washing of the repellent fabric and evaluation of repellency using standard techniques, which requires 2-3 days to reach on a conclusion. In this work a new technique based on contact angle measurement has been evolved that gives an indication of repellency within 2-3 min and durability of repellency within 30 min.

Comparative Enactment of Fluorocarbon-free and Fluorocarbon-based Water Repellent Finishes on Cotton Single Jersey Fabrics

“…It has been reported that various types of fluorocarbons that are used for textile finishing, mainly used to impart water repellency along with oil repellency (Xu CH 2010, Castelvetro V2001, Shao H 2004, Lee H J 2007, Li Z R 2008, Roe B 2009). These consist of perfluorinated carbon chains incorporating a polymer backbone with perfluoro groups as its side chains (Kasturiya N 2003). Some existing fluorochemicals are made with C8 carbon backbone chains that can release perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and other toxic and hazardousmaterials.…”

Water and Oil Repellent Finishing of Textiles by UV Curing: Evaluation of the Influence of Scaled-Up Process Parameters

“…These consist of perfluorinated carbon chains which impart, at the same time, water and oil repellency to the fiber surface when incorporated into a polymer backbone with perfluoro groups as side chains [15].…”

Life cycle assessment of high-protective clothing for complex emergency operations

“…Even in a given emergency operation, rescue teams are exposed to a variety of risks. Flood clean-up workers, for example, face variable hazards in flood waters that, in addition to obvious hazards such as water permeation (Choi, Cho, Kim, & Cho, 2004), may also include sewage, household chemicals and cleaning solutions, petroleum products, biological contamination (Kastiriya & Bhargava, 2003), hazardous industrial chemicals (Schreuder-Gibson et al, 2003), pesticides (Carroll, 2001;Mandel et al, 1996) and flammable liquids (Fenske, Birnbaum, Methner, Lu, & Nigg, 2002).…”