STUDY OF EFFICIENCY OF ENDOWING ANTIMICROBIC PROPERTIES TO ELEMENTARIZED LINEN FIBERS

Abstract

The authors have carried out the comparison of antimicrobic activity of flax fibers obtained by different methods and doped with preparations of silver or quarternary ammonium salts. The elementarized flax fibers obtained by the method of recurring cyclic deforming loads, differ essentially from the known analogs (cottonized fibers) because of the almost full absence of mechanical impurities. An important feature of elementarized flax fiber is the developed capillary-porous surface, which is confirmed by its high sorption capacity. The average mass length linear density, content of fibers of the fluff group, content of flax shive and also the hygroscopicity indexes were determined by the standard methods of material science. The level of whiteness was measured with "JENA" leukometer by “Carl Zeiss”. The quantitative output of antiseptic preparations ("Poviargole" and "Chlorhexidine") on fibers was controlled by the spectrophotometry method with the use of the spectrophotometer "Agilent 8453". The antimicrobic activity of the studied flax fibers was determined by estimating the change in coefficients of light-transmission of the solutions (containing nutrient medium for microbic cultures) before and after putting the studied samples into them. It is ascertained that elementarized flax fibers suppress the growth of microflora of the test cultures E. coli, Staphylococcus aureus and yeast-like fungus Candida albicans more effectively, than the mechanically cleaned ones.