Microplastic Waste Generation from Polyester Cotton Blend in Spectra Slub Yarn Knitted Fabric during Wet Abrasion.

Production, usage, and disposal of textiles release fibers into the environment. A significant source of this kind of contamination is textile synthetic fibers, which reach the ocean through wastewater and other sources. Wet abrasion is very common during laundering and the damage due to abrasion is more in wet than in the dry state. So it is important to analyse the wet abrasion for the durability of the fabric. During wet abrasion, fiber swelling stiffens the fabric, and the flexibility required to prevent the development of high abrasive stresses is reduced. This increases the fabric abrasion and fabric gets  abraded easily as compared to dry abrasion. The wet abrasion is a complex process and the results of the present study reveal the combined effect of multiple factors such as slicing and slippage action, cohesion, rupture mechanism of fiber and fabric GSM [1-3] The quantity of fiber shedding from a polyester/cotton blended textile during wet abrasion is quantified in this work, and the impact of increasing the polyester percentage on fiber loss is investigated.  Wet abrasion testing of the samples is employed to calculate the weight loss percentage. The effect of GSM on the fiber loss for both 20/80 and 40/60 polyester cotton blended slub yarn fabric is shown in Figure 1. It is observed that higher percentage of polyester in P/C slub yarn causes more fiber loss since with the increase in polyester percentage the inter-fiber cohesion decreases and the fiber slippage increases, during abrasion. This further reduces the abrasion resistance of fabric. It is also observed that the percentage weight loss is less for P/C20/80 blend in all the GSM tested. Although with increase in GSM, the abrasion resistance increases, yet it can be observed that there is limitation to increase in GSM. It is worthwhile to note that GSM 191 and GSM 200 have lower yarn counts, still less weight loss is observed because higher GSM compensates for the lower yarn counts. The results indicate that the wet abrasion of fabric can be reduced significantly with the correct selection of counts, gsm and fiber injection percentage. This not only fulfils the demand for fancy fabric durability but also satisfies the requirement to reduce synthetic fiber load in the environment. Since fiber from clothes are a major source of microplastics into environment, optimising of textile constructions and minimising the percentage of synthetic blends could prove to be a smart option. Fig.1. Percentage weight loss relations with the impact of gsm on the polyester/cotton blended fabric