Formaldehyde Finishing

Abstract

Although formaldehyde has many advantages as a crosslinking agent, including low chemical cost and high finish durability, formaldehyde processes are notorious for lack of control, high strength loss of treated cotton, and excessive fumes around the treating range. This paper describes attempts to develop techniques that suffer less from these deficiencies. The first experiments were aimed at developing a version of the gaseous formaldehyde/sulfur dioxide process, hitherto successfully used on garments only, for continuous processing of fabric. This led to comparisons of different means of applying formaldehyde and catalysts, both in gaseous form and in aqueous solutions. The preferred systems proved to be based on application of aqueous formaldehyde at very low wet pickup, with one of a variety of catalysts.