The Importance Of Textile Chemicals

Textile chemical is an essential substance for textile industries. Most fabrics are finished using chemicals, the process is called ‘wet processing’. Special chemicals are applied to the fabrics in a series of steps. The Textile Industry uses lots of chemicals in the manufacturing process of fabrics. Around 10% to 100% of the weight of the fabric in chemicals is used to manufacture a fabric. The final fabric produced contains about 27% of chemical weight, if it is made of 100% natural fibres like cotton and linen.

The Textile finishing process involves many activities like preparation and pre treatment, printing, dyeing and refinement of fabrics. Few Textile Chemical Products are very specifically prepared chemicals like biocides, water repellents, flame retardants and warp sizes. Other chemical products are simple mixtures such as starch, sulfonated oils, emulsified oils and greases, waxes and certain surfactants. More than 60 different textile chemical classes are applied in fabric pre treatment, yarn formation, fabric finishing, textile laminating and coating and various other applications.

The common treatments done on fabrics are as follows:-

• Scouring- Raw textile materials have impurities like mud, additives, dirt in their natural form. These raw materials can’t be directly used for clothing materials. Pesticides, fungicides, worm killers, etc are also present in raw materials. The removal of these impurities is called scouring.
• Bleaching- in order to finish a fabric in white colour, it has to be given surface ornamentation; this means that all natural colours have to be removed. This process of decolourization of raw textile material is called bleaching.

Textile chemicals can be categorized in two broad types:-

Textile auxiliaries-

These are used to undertake various functions like cleaning of natural fibers and smoothing of the fabrics. The substances included in textile auxiliaries are:-

• Complex agents that comprise stable water-soluble complexes
• Emulsifiers
• Sequestering agents
• Wetting agents, which accelerates the penetration of finishing liquors
• Dispersing agents
• Surfactants, which reduce the surface tension of water, thus grease and oil can be easily removed.

Basic chemicals-

These are all the basic textile chemicals used such as salts, acids and bases. These include:-

• Dyes
• Fixing agents
• PH regulators
• Levelling agents
• Dye-protective agents
• Carriers
• UV absorbers
• Finishes

Textile chemicals are required for various applications in textile industry. These chemicals are applied on fabrics to perform various activities of textile production. Textile chemicals are a mix of salts, bases, acids and textile auxiliaries.

Ankit Gupta is a well known author and has written articles on Trade Leads, B2B Portal, Wholesale suppliers, IT Solution Companies, Manufactures Exporters and many other subjects. For more detail please visit: http://www.exportersindia.com