Due to the obvious limitations of chemical processing of cotton, there is a need to bring better technology to overcome these restraints. Plasma technology is an environmental friendly and cost effective process that cleans out the non-cellulosic components of the cotton fibers. These cotton nonwovens can be functionalized to achieve some valuable characteristics such as wetability, hydrophilicity, breathability and adhesion properties.  In this paper, we characterized the needlepunched cotton nonwovens by using the advanced atmospheric pressure plasma technology and observed the effects of the treatment by using various analytical techniques such as wax content determination, contact angle measurement, tensile strength and other mechanical properties. Further, the material will be examined by atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging to observe the nano-level effects.  This project also deals with the development of a new method to determine the waxes from raw cotton.

Environmentally benign processing of cotton nonwovens

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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