The Research On The Dissolution Of Waste Wool And Its Blending With Cellulose

Wool fiber has many excellent properties and is widely used in textile industry. However, only a small amount of nature wool can be further processed and most of them are abandoned directly. How to use those waste wool resource attracts many researchers'attention. The traditional methods to dissolve wool keratin lead to the serious degradation of wool keratin and environment pollution.In this paper an ionic liquid (IL) is used to dissolve wool keratin and the regenerated cellulose/wool fibers were prepared. The main contents include:(1) Four kinds of ILs, i.e. 1-buty-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([BMIM]Cl), 1-buty-3-methylimidazolium bromine ([BMIM]Br), 1-buty-3-methylimidazolium hexaflourophosphate ([BMIM]PF6) and 1-allyl-3-methyl-imidazolium([AMIM]Cl) were synthesized. The dissolving ability of the four ILs to wool keratin was discussed. The results showed that [BMIM]Cl had the best dissolving ability to keratin, which is chosen to be the solvent of wool keratin for further discussion. The different factors, i.e. dissolving temperature and time, were discussed to show their influence on the solubility of keratin in [BMIM]CI. The solubility of keratin increases with increasing dissolving temperature and time. [BMIM]Cl can dissolve keratin up to 13% at 130℃.(2) The rheology properties of the cellulose/wool blend solution were discussed. Three parameters were discussed, i.e. blend ratio, dissolving temperature and solution concentration. The viscosity of the solution increases with the increasing solid content and cellulose content in the blend solution, which decreases with the growth of temperature. All the investigated solutions are shown as shear thinning fluid. The dynamic rheology properties were also discussed. The complex viscosity decreases with increasing temperature. The elasticity of solution increases with increasing cellulose content, the solution with the blend ratio of 3:1 (cellulose:wool) has obviously higher elastic than the other investigated solutions.(3) The cellulose/keratin blend films were prepared. The structures of blends were evaluated through SEM, TG and FT-IR and the mechanical properties of blends were tested. As the relative content of cellulose increases, the tensile strength increases and the elongation at break decreases. The FT-IR shows that there isn't any remarkable change between the regenerated films and raw materials. TGA shows that blend films had better thermal stability than that of raw materials, and the film has the best thermal stability when the blend ratio was 60/40(cellulose/wool).(4) The Cellulose/keratin blend fibers were prepared through wet-spinning process. Three parameters were discussed during the spinning process, i.e. draw ratio of spinning nozzle, temperature of coagulating bath and drawing speed. The results showed that the mechanical strength of the fiber is improved with the increasing drawing ratio of spinning nozzle and water bath. And the fiber regenerated from 40℃coagulating bath has the best strength than that in 20℃and 50℃. The strength of the fiber reaches 2.07cN/tex. The SEM results show that the regeneration keratin is distributed on the surface and inside of fiber. The XRD results show that the crystalline of cellulose has changed from celluloseⅠto celluloseⅡand wool keratin still has two crystalline structures, i.e.α-helix chain andβ-fold chain.