Continuous Low-Temperature Discharge Treatment of Wool Yarn A Process for Making Wool Yarn Oil Repellent and Shrink Resistant

A continuous discharge process has been developed to make wool yarn shrink resistant and oil repellent. A commer cially available fluorocarbon monomer was adsorbed on wool yarn and permanently grafted to the yarn by exposure to a low temperature discharge. Yarn was obtained with less than one percent fluorocarbon add-on after extensive extrac tion with a solvent in which the monomer and homopolymer are soluble. Yarn with high levels of oil repellency and fabrics with area shrinkage between 5% and 10% was obtained. The effect of process variables such as discharge power and concentration of adsorbed fluorocarbon were studied. X-ray photoetectron spectroscopy was used to detect the fluorocarbon graft on the yarn and to estimate the change in the concentration of the fluorocarbon graft on the yarn after solvent extraction and laundry tests.