Effectiveness of bio-scouring over conventional scouring on cotton knitted fabric

The introduction of enzymes in the treatment of textiles has made a significant contribution to the textile sector. The traditional pretreatment scouring process has many drawbacks, conciliated by handling with enzymes. Since most factories still use traditional pretreatment to obviate natural impurities from cotton knit fabric, they experience a lot of water, electricity, stream, and time consumption, and more significant fiber loss. Also, the conventional pretreatment method leads to significant amount of wastewater that has a detrimental impact on the environment. If we use enzyme rather than chemicals used in conventional processing, the fiber damage will be less, cost will come down, the processes will be eco-friendly, and so do the water released by then and most importantly the effect will be better in this case. In other words, we will get a better quality product with eco-friendly process if we use enzyme instead of conventional chemicals. Hence, the main focus of the paper is to investigate whether there is the usability and replace ability of the enzyme scouring process over the caustic soda scouring process on cotton knit fabric or not. In this research, cotton knit fabrics was scoured by SCOURZYME (bio-scouring enzyme) and caustic soda. Physicochemical parameters of the wastewater derived from caustic scouring and enzymatic scouring had been examined. Some selected physical characteristics including absorbency test, percentage of weight loss, whiteness index, moisture regain, moisture content, bursting strength, color fastness to wash, rubbing and perspiration, were also analyzed for scoured and dyed materials. As a result, bio-scouring method improved the absorption of the material without any substantial loss of strength and helped to properly dye and finish the cloth. Substantial lower consumption of electricity, water, streams, chemicals, and time and, consequently, cost, environmental pressures were reduced in the enzyme method. Physicochemical parameters test results indicated more significant ecological improvement than the traditional approach for using enzymes. What is more, the physical characteristics also demonstrated better outcomes in the use of enzymatic scouring method except some cases. Therefore, we cannot ensure it as an only substitute because it does not give desired result in some cases. Although both have some restriction in the textile sector, they can be properly utilized by evaluating their respective merits and drawbacks. This work provides a set of experimental results, discussion and comparison between the two methods.This report presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Textile Engineering