Production and characterization of cotton-chicken feather fibres blended absorbent fabrics

Abstract

Nonwoven fabrics are mostly used in modern disposable hygienic products where their primary purpose is to offer excellent absorbency as well as comfort to consumers. Scientists, both on the academic and industrial level, have faced numerous challenges in designing nonwoven fabrics of significantly high performance in terms of absorbency and comfort. With the new design, the hygienic products can now be deemed a luxury because of the introduction of superabsorbent polymers. Hence, the need to manufacture these products with either cheap raw materials or reduced production cost and still have excellent performance is vital. Chicken feather fibres have been identified as prospective plentiful fibres that can be used as cheap raw materials in nonwoven production. The problem is that nonwoven fabrics cannot be made entirely from chicken feather fibres due to their poor length. In this work, they were blended with bleached cotton fibres to produce a nonwoven fabric via a needle punched technique used to convert the fibrous web into a coherent fabric structure. The effect of process parameters such as the speed of the conveyor belt, stroke frequency and depth of needle penetration on the absorbency of the fabrics were studied and the optimum conditions were determined. Superabsorbent solutions were used as coatings to improve the absorption behaviour of the new fabrics. The results revealed that the absorbency of the uncoated samples decreased as the speed, stroke frequency and depth of needle penetration increased. Moreover, it was found that the final volume fraction of the fibres used strongly affected the fabric absorbency. Coated fabrics however, had high absorbency compared to uncoated fabrics as well as the samples of absorbent core used in some commercial diapers.