Study on the Dyeing and Fastness Properties of Ash Veneer with Acid Dyes.

As an alternative to raw wood, processed timber can help reduce costs and environmental damage while meeting the needs of various fields that require building materials possessing the sensibility of raw timber. Veneer wood is positioned as a high-value-added product owing to its elegance and beauty, and it is used in various building-related fields, such as interior decoration, furniture, flooring, building interior materials, and lumber. Dyeing is necessary to enhance its esthetic appearance and expand its use. In this study, we compared and analyzed the dyeability of ash-patterned materials using acid dyes and evaluated their performance as interior materials. The ash-patterned material was dyed using three types of acid dyes, and a comparative analysis was performed. The most suitable dyeing conditions were 80 °C, 3 h, and 3% o.w.f. Furthermore, the effect of pretreatment before the dyeing process, the effect of methyl alcohol solvent during dyeing with acid dyes, and the dyeability of veneers dyed under various temperature and time conditions were also compared and analyzed. Resilience to daylight, resilience to rubbing, fire resistance, and flame retardance of the selected material were evaluated as being suitable for use as a building material for interiors.

Development and Performance Evaluation of Polytetrafluoroethylene-Membrane-Based Automotive Cabin Air Filter.

A high-efficiency, long-life cabin filter unit is required for the effective purification of the air inside a vehicle. However, conventional cabin air filters that utilize electrostatic effects are less efficient and less effective owing to environmental factors. Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membranes exhibit a high porosity and surface-to-surface dust-removal performance, and maintain a stable pressure drop, indicating their good potential as filter materials. Therefore, in this study, the use of PTFE membranes for the fabrication of automobile filters and the filtration performance of the filters were examined. To this end, first, the properties of PTFE membranes mainly used in HEPA air conditioning filters and those of membranes used as vehicle cabin filters were compared. Next, the thickness, weight, stiffness, pore size, and filtration performance characteristics of filter media fabricated by blending melt-blown (MB) nonwoven, PTFE membranes, and supporting nonwoven into a total filtration layer were compared and analyzed. Lastly, the environmental change durability performance of the automobile cabin filter based on PTFE membrane and the results of the test after the installation of the filter in a vehicle were demonstrated.

Comparison of the Silhouette of Virtual Clothes by Fabric Characteristics of Nylon Fabric for the Utilization of Virtual Clothes.

In this study, various nylon fabrics were investigated to measure the physical properties of the actual fabric using Kawabata systems and CLO fabric kits, and the correlation between the physical and drape properties of the fabric was statistically analyzed. Subsequently, the CLO fabric kit results were used as basic data for the CLO three-dimensional (3D) virtual clothing program, and the drapeability of the virtual fabrics was measured. The factors with the most significant effect on the drape properties were analyzed by comparing the drape measurement of the real fabrics through the variable measurement of various fabrics and correlation analysis with the drape properties, and attempts were made to reduce the difference between real fabrics and their virtual implementations. The correlation analysis results revealed that both the Kawabata system and CLO fabric kit results indicated that the bending and shear properties exhibited the highest correlation with the drape ratio. In addition, the comparison of the real and virtual fabric images revealed that they exhibited a similar morphology. Furthermore, the results confirmed that the difference between the real and virtual fabrics could be reduced as much as possible when the values measured using the Kawabata system and CLO fabric kit were converted into a database. Subsequently, the differences between virtual fabrics with various thicknesses were confirmed through CLO 3D simulation. The findings of this study are expected to be used as basic data for building fabric database.

Evaluation of Touch and Durability of Cotton Knit Fabrics Treated with Reactive Urethane-Silicone Softener.

A new reactive urethane-silicone softener was developed to provide a soft touch to cotton knit fabrics with improved durability to washing and dimensional stability. The reactive urethane-silicone softener consisted of an amino silicone softener and a blocked isocyanate, which can crosslink and react with cellulose surfaces. The activated isocyanate from the blocked isocyanate reacted with the amino silicone softener by heat treatment at 150 °C for 30 min. The mechanical properties of the cotton knit fabrics treated with the urethane-silicone softener were evaluated using a Kawabata Evaluation System-Fabrics (KES-FB) system. The cotton knit fabrics treated with the urethane-silicone softener showed excellent elasticity, flexibility and shear recovery as well as excellent recovery against bending deformation, and soft and smooth surface characteristics with a small coefficient of friction that were maintained even after washing 20 times.

Improvement of Polytetrafluoroethylene Membrane High-Efficiency Particulate Air Filter Performance with Melt-Blown Media.

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane filters are widely used in low-load application areas, such as industrial cleanrooms, due to their low initial pressure drop. In this study, melt-blown (MB) nonwoven was introduced as a pre-filtration layer at the front end of a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter to improve the filter performance of the PTFE membrane. Pre-filtration reduces the average particle size, which reaches the PTFE membrane and reduces the dust load on the HEPA filters. A comparative analysis of the HEPA filters by composite MB and PTFE was conducted. Regarding the MB composite on the PTFE, low-weight and high-weight MB composites were effective in increasing dust filtration efficiency, and the dust loading capacity of the PTFE composite with high-weight MB increased by approximately three times that of the PTFE membrane. In addition, the filter was installed on an external air conditioner in an actual use environment and showed a high efficiency of 99.984% without a change in differential pressure after 120 days.

Sustainable and high-power wearable glucose biofuel cell using long-term and high-speed flow in sportswear fabrics.

Wearable electronics have been extensively studied owing to their capability of undertaking continuous multi-task for daily needs. Meanwhile, lightweight, flexible, and wearable power sources that enable high-power and sustainable energy conversion from ambient resources (e.g. bodily fluids) have attracted attention. We propose a wearable and flexible textile-based biofuel cell using moisture management fabric (MMF) widely used in sportswear as a transport layer for sustainable and high-power energy harvesting. The reduction of PB-modified cathode is driven by the oxidation of glucose catalyzed by GOD-modified anode, and this enables a single-compartment structure where MMF acts as biofuel transport media. MMF made of polyester can naturally induce a continuous, high-speed flow which facilitates molecule transport for efficient chemical reactions without an additional pump. The resulting highly efficient power generation in MMF is explored and verified by comparing it with those of cotton and paper. Additionally, multi-stack biofuel cell in both parallel and series was successfully realized, and the open circuit voltage and maximum power reached 1.08 V and 80.2 µW, respectively. Integrated into a bandage and sportswear, a six-stack biofuel cell was able to generate sufficient electrical power from human sweat and turn on a sports watch directly. Owing to low-cost and scalable fabrication process, the proposed biofuel cell has great potential to be systematically integrated into clothes, and generate sufficient and sustainable electrical power for wearable electronics using biofuel (e.g. glucose, lactase) from various bodily fluids, like sweat and urine.

Carboxymethyl Cellulose (CMC) as a Template for Laccase-Assisted Oxidation of Aniline.

Polyaniline (PANi) is a conducting polymer which has been subject of intensive research on the exploitation of new products and applications. The main aim of the work is the development of a conductive bacterial cellulose (BC)-based material by enzymatic-assisted polymerization of aniline. For this, we study the role of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) as a template for the in situ polymerization of aniline. Bacterial cellulose was used as the supporting material for the entrapment of CMC and for the in situ oxidation reactions. The amount of CMC entrapped inside BC was optimized as well as the conditions for laccase-assisted oxidation of aniline. The new oligomers were evaluated by spectrometric techniques, namely 1H NMR and MALDI-TOF, and the functionalized BC surfaces were analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and reflectance spectrophotometry. The conductivity of the developed materials was evaluated using the four-probe methodology. The oligomers obtained after reaction in the presence of CMC as template display a similar structure as when the reaction is conducted only in BC. Though, after oxidation in the presence of this template, the amount of oligomers entrapped inside BC/CMC is considerably higher conferring to the material greater electrical conductivity and coloration. The use of CMC as a template for aniline oxidation on BC seems to be a promising and cheap strategy to improve the yield of functionalization and increment the properties of the materials, namely electrical conductivity and coloration.

Effect of Additives on the in situ Laccase-Catalyzed Polymerization of Aniline Onto Bacterial Cellulose.

Laccase-mediated systems are a green route to accelerate the oxidation of aniline and obtain polyaniline with conductive properties. The synthesis of green polyaniline (emeraldine salt) was herein improved by the inclusion of additives like sodium bis (2-ethyl hexyl) sulfosuccinate (AOT) and potassium hexacyanoferrate (II) (KHCF) in the medium. The aniline polymerization was confirmed by the detection of the absorption band typical of emeraldine salt at 420 nm, typical of the semiquinoid radical cation, and of the polaron absorption band at 700-800 nm, corresponding to the distinctive signal of doped or partial doped aniline. The oligomers and/or polymers obtained were characterized by spectrometry techniques, namely 1H NMR and MALDI-TOF, and the bacterial cellulose (BC) conductivity was assessed by means of a four-point probe electrical conductivity technique. The best polymerization results were obtained with 5 mM AOT, 10 mM KHCF, and 25 U/mL of laccase. The synergistic effect between both additives in the presence of a catalyst leads to obtaining BC samples coated with green polyaniline with promising electric conductive properties.

Conductive bacterial cellulose by in situ laccase polymerization of aniline.

Conductive and colored bacterial cellulose (BC) was developed by entrapment of polyaniline (PANi) onto dry BC membranes. The polyaniline was produced by in situ green polymerization of aniline by Myceliophthora thermophila laccase at pH = 4, 25°C, in the presence of a mediator, 1-hydroxybenzotriazol (HBT), using two different reactors, a water bath (WB) and an ultrasonic bath (US). MALDI-TOF and 1H NMR characterization of the experiment solutions confirmed the efficient polymerization of aniline by laccase. The dried BC membranes with entrapped polyaniline showed electrical conductive behavior and strong coloration, opening novel routes for the exploitation of functionalized bacterial cellulose as a green material for technical textiles, wearables, and other applications.

Conductive Cotton by In Situ Laccase-Polymerization of Aniline.

Conductive cotton fabrics were obtained via in situ aniline polymerization by laccase from Myceliophthora thermophila under mild reaction conditions without the addition of strong proton acids. The reactions were conducted using two types of reactors, namely a water bath (WB) and an ultrasonic bath (US), and the role of a mediator, 1-hydroxybenzotriazol (HBT), on the laccase-assisted polymerization of aniline was investigated. A similar polymerization degree was obtained when using both reactors-however, the ultrasonic bath allowed the experiments to be conducted in shorter periods of time (24 h for WB vs. 2 h for US). The data obtained also revealed that the mediator (1-hydroxybenzotriazol-HBT) played a crucial role in aniline oxidation. A higher conversion yield and polymerization degree were obtained when the reaction was conducted in the presence of this compound, as confirmed by MALDI-TOF analysis. The cotton fabrics coated with polyaniline presented deep coloration and conductivity, especially when the mediator was included on the reactional system. The results obtained are a step forward in the enzymatic polymerization of aniline with the purpose of obtaining coloured conductive textile surfaces, with potential applications in wearable electronics.