Wednesday, July 30, 2008

[ Technical Textiles - Quick dry coconut textiles.]

BOULDER – [24.07.08] Cocona Inc., which uses a patented process to infuse activated carbon derived from coconut shells into polyester fibres, has revealed the results of a new study which suggests its technology can lower the energy impact of a garment.

The results of the US company's new study on fabric drying times will be detailed in the August issue of Ecotextile News. The study was undertaken following existing work from Marks and Spencer, which showed that that 80% of the energy used in the life cycle of apparel was attributed to consumer maintenance with just 20% of energy consumed during the manufacturing process.

In the Cocona, Inc. R&D lab, comparably constructed polo shirts were individually washed and put into a standard home dryer. The energy use was measured by monitoring the power, voltage, current, temperature and relative humidity of the dryer. This testing protocol was replicated by Colorado State University and the results were corroborated. North Carolina State University also used their own testing protocol and found that Cocona garments have up to 35% faster drying rate compared to conventional polyester.

This dry time testing also showed that the Cocona fabric used 22% less energy than ordinary polyester and 52% less energy than cotton or bamboo. Of further interest is that the dry time of cotton towels and denim jeans can be significantly improved by the use of Cocona yarn in the fabric blend. For example, denim jeans using a 35% Cocona/65% cotton blend used 23% less energy to dry than standard 100% cotton denim in this study.

SOURCE

http://www.ecotextile.com

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