Microfiber mitigation from synthetic textiles — impact of combined surface modification and finishing process

The use of proper mitigation strategies to control the impact of microfiber pollution is need of the hour requirement. Though several laundry aids were developed to reduce the environmental impact caused by synthetic microfiber, due to the lack of awareness among the public, their effectiveness was limited. Hence, the mitigation measures at the production stage of textile materials can be a proactive solution with greater effectiveness in mitigating the issue at different stages rather than focussing only on domestic laundering. In this aspect, few recent attempts have been made to control the microfiber release from textiles by the surface finishing process. Thus, the current research focused on utilizing the surface modification process and surface finishing process to reduce the microfiber release behavior of knitted polyester fabrics. In this study, polyester knitted fabric (PES) was surface finished with chitosan (PES-Ch), sericin (PES-Se), and polyvinyl alcohol (PES-PVA), and their effectiveness in reducing microfiber shedding during laundry was analyzed. These finishes are applied directly on the polyester fabric and also after surface modification by alkali (Al) and enzyme (En) pre-treatments. The results reported that at the first wash, directly finished samples showed a reduction of 30–40% in microfiber shedding, and the samples finished after alkali pre-treatment showed a significant reduction of 47–84.29% (p < 0.05). Reduction in microfiber release was noted in the order of chitosan finish with alkali pre-treatment (PES-Al-Ch) > chitosan finish (PES-Ch) > sericin finish with alkali pre-treatment (PES-Al-Se) > polyvinyl alcohol finish with alkali pre-treatment (PES-Al-PVA) > polyvinyl alcohol finish (PES-PVA) for both fiber count and mass. In the case of enzyme pre-treatment, no reduction was reported, irrespective of the finishes applied. Repeated wash test results showed that the finishes could withstand and effectively control the microfiber release from the polyester fabric even after 20 washes. The performance of PES-Al-Ch fabric was superior among other modifications up to the fifth wash (with an 83.55% reduction in microfiber release). At extended washes like the 15th and 20th wash, the performance of PES-Al-PVA fabric was found to be better, with 94% and 95% microfiber reduction, respectively.