Abstract:

Oxalic acid was used for the softening of cotton-straw bast fiber so as to improve the fibers’ textile application. By orthogonal experiment and intuitive analysis and variance analysis methods, it was obtained that the influence degree of experimental factors on the flexibility of cotton-straw bast fiber and the optimum parameters of the fiber softening treatment. Under the optimum parameters, the flexibility of . cotton-straw bast fiber was 2.55 T/(m?tex) and the strength of the fiber was 3.13cN/dtex. At significance level α=0.01, curing temperature had significant influence on the fiber flexibility. Based on X-ray diffraction analysis on D/MAX-2400 and related calculations, it was showed that the crystallinity of the treated fibers was 64.9%, which was less than that of untreated fibers.

Key words: cotton-straw bast fiber, oxalic acid, softening, flexibility