Enzymatic scouring of cotton knitted fabric with neutral pectinases - the influence to sewability

Abstract

It is well known that alkali scouring is ecologically and economically unfavorable; therefore in last few years new procedures of enzymatic scouring with pectinases were investigated. The scouring with alkali pectinases results in better sewability. Recently, the new neutral pectinases were introduced. In this paper, the influence of these pectinases the cotton knitted fabric sewability was researched, and compared to traditional alkali and alkali pectinase scouring, as well. Therefore, raw cotton knitted fabric was scoured in three different ways - traditional with alkali, and enzymatic with two pectinases - BioPrep 3000L (Novozymes), alkali one and Beisol PRO (Bezema), neutral one; bleached and softened. The influence of these treatments to wastewater quality and to cotton fabric properties such as hydrophilicity, degree of polymerization (DP), whiteness and needle penetration force are compared. Damage of knitted fabric loops during sewing procedure through two and four layers, which are closely connected with the values of sewing needle penetration force and dynamic tension of the sewing thread, were measured on new developed instalment which detects faults in samples of the knitted fabric by means of sensors.