Textile Industry

The textile industry covers each step in the manufacture of clothes, from design to production. Each of the intermediate steps involves a host of infrastructural elements, inclusive of raw materials and chemicals.

To support clients in the textile industry line, MAME has made available a range of basic and advanced raw materials and chemicals essential for the sustenance and smooth progress of textile manufacture.

With appreciation of the need for high quality chemicals and products, MAME strictly exercises Quality Control tests on all products before dispatch.

Under the listings for textile industry, MAME provides:

  • Calcium hydroxide
  • Sodium carbonate
  • Caustic soda flakes

It is used in textile industry. Sodium hydroxide is used mainly for two processes in textile manufacture. Mercerizing of fibre with sodium and hydroxide solution enables greater tensional strength and consistent lustre. It also removes waxes and oils from fibre to make the fibre more receptive to bleaching and dying. Sodium hydroxide is also used in the production of viscose rayon. Cellulose is extracted from pulp using sodium hydroxide and subsequently treated with high purity sodium hydroxide to produce soda cellulose.

Also known as slaked lime, hydrated lime, builder’s lime, caustic lime and pickling lime, Calcium hydroxide is a chemical with wide-spread use in a host of industries. By structure and composition, it is an inorganic compound, occurring either as colourless crystals or as a white powder. Traditionally, calcium hydroxide is produced by stirring calcium oxide or quick lime with water.

While water treatment, paper manufacturing, pickling and food refining are the more common uses of calcium hydroxide, several other uses exist. For instance, calcium hydroxide can also be used to prepare dry mixes for painting, dyes in the textile industry, manufacture pesticides and manufacture break-pads for vehicles.

Areas of application:
  • Textile industry
  • Food industry: pickling, juice clarification, digestion aids, baking soda substitute.
  • Water treatment industry: Clarification of water.
  • Cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry: hair removal creams, hair relaxers, digestion aids, fluid clarification.
Qualities:
  • Flocculating ability
  • Odourless

Sodium carbonate is used in dyeing cotton and other cellulose fibres such as linen, rayon, tencel or hemp, to increase the pH (alkalinity) of the reaction. The ideal pH depends on the fibre and the individual dye colour. Soda ash changes the pH of the fibre-reactive dye and cellulose fibre so that the dye reacts with the fibre, making a permanent attachment that holds the dye to the fibre.

Washing soda, soda ash, soda crystals are other names for Sodium Carbonate. Typically, this compound occurs as crystalline heptahydrate, a form that spontaneously effloresces to form white, odourless, hygroscopic powder.

Domestically, Sodium carbonate is popularly knownto be a water softener, as it can form a moderately basic solution in water. Additionally, Sodium Carbonate is also used to manufacture glass. This salt acts as a flux or silica and effectively lowers the melting point of the slurry-making the process easier to curate.

Sodium carbonate can be extracted from ashes of plants cultivated in Sodium-laden soil. Hence the name soda ash, for sodium carbonate. Apart from these, Sodium carbonate also has important uses in the food, chemical, textile and cosmetic industries.

Areas of application:
  • Textile industry – water softener.
  • Cosmetic industry
  • Food industry – lyeing.
  • Manufacturing industry – glass manufacture.
  • Chemical industry – electrolytes.
Qualities:
  • Hygroscopic
  • Odourless
  • Flux (melting point reducer)

Caustic soda or lye is another name for the compound Sodium Hydroxide. An inorganic white compound, Caustic soda is available in pellets, granules solutions and flakes.

Caustic soda flakes are soluble in water, ethanol and methanol. Apart from being used as the chemical base in manufacturing of pulp, paper and textiles, caustic soda is also used to purify multiple fluids. Soaps and detergents have caustic soda as a component. Drinking water is manufactured using caustic soda as a cleaning agent. Textile industries also use caustic soda flakes for several reasons.

The food industry also employs caustic soda for chemical peeling and softening purposes. Similar uses are applied to fodder given to domesticated animals.

Areas of application:
  • Textile industry
  • Animal feed – chemical peelers, softeners, purifiers.
  • Food industry – chemical peelers, softeners, purifiers.
  • Paper industry
  • Cleaning industry – purifiers.
Qualities:
  • Softener
  • Alkaline
  • Preservative

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