Effect of Development of Hand Woven Fabric with Anti-bacterial Activities

Abstract

The development of anti-bacterial hand woven fabrics aimed to examine the anti-bacterial  properties of blended hand-woven fabrics manufactured from cotton and chitin-chitosan. Threads from cotton sourced locally in Lampang province were  blended  with  chitin-chitosan  threads  as  crabyon,  with  the micronaire of  5.38.  The  mass ratios of  the  cotton  and  crabyon were  varied  as follows:   100:0,  90:10,  80:20,  70:30,  and  0:100, respectively. All  these  fibers  were  spun  and  traded  by  Medleri Charkha  machine. The threads obtained  Ne 5.62 – 5.94, were then woven by local loom using  the structure of plain  weave  1 - 1. Industrial cotton threads sized Ne 40/2 were used as filling yarn and the weaving required 40  filling yarns/inch. After the weaving process was completed, the fabric was subjected to an anti-bacterial test  against  Staphylococcus aureus.  The unwashed and washed (for 5 times) blended woven fabric samples were tested against this bacteria for the duration of 0 and 24 hr.  It was found that the blended woven fabric of all ratios showed  no  anti-bacterial properties. This  may be  due  to  the low  quantity  of  crabyon  in the  blended  woven fabric.