Flame-Retarding of Cotton/Polyester Blended Yarn Fabrics
Using Two-Component Sequential Treatment
Hiroh KUBOKAWA
Textile Research Institute of Gunma Prefecture; 5-46-1 Aioi-cho, Kiryu-shi 376-0011 Japan
Cotton/polyester (C/P) blended yarn fabrics were treated with several flame retardants used for poly (ethylene terephthalate) (PET) using pad-dry-cure method. The relationships between the chemical structures of the flame retardants and their partition into PET fibers were investigated. When tetrabromobisphenol A (TBP-A) was tested, the amount of sorption increased with increasing concentration of TBP-A in treating acetone solution, and reached 4.0%o.w.f. (% on the weight of the fibre) at 10 wt%. This treated fabric was again treated with a flame retardant for cotton, Pyrovatex CP New, which contains dimethyl 2- (N-hydroxymethylcarbamoyl)ethylphosphonate as a main component. However, sufficient flame retardancy was not obtained. The second partition of TBP-A to cotton during heating was thought to lower the sorption efficiency of Pyrovatex CP New. Based on this assumption, for the case of the two-component sequential treatment, the Pyrovatex CP New treatment, which generates covalent bonds with hydroxy groups of cellulose, should be carried out prior to the TBP-A treatment. When a C/P blended yarn fabric was treated with Pyrovatex CP New and then with TBP-A, the amount of sorption of Pyrovatex CP New was 9.6%o.w.f. and the amount of sorption of TBP-A was 4.6%o.w.f. The limiting oxygen index of the treated fabric was 27.2%, a sufficient value for flame retardancy. From this result, it was concluded that the practical flame-retardant finishing of C/P blended yarn fabrics could be carried out by using a simple finishing machine.
[Contents (In Japanese) ]
[Contents (In English) ]