US-Egypt Cooperative Research: Pollution Reduction and Material Conservation in Pretreatment of Cellulosic Textiles

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9713642 Hamouda Description: This award is for support of a cooperative project by Dr. Hechmi Hamouda, Department of Textile Engineering, Chemistry, and Science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC, and Dr. Mohamed El-Rafie, Head of the Textile Research Division at the National Research Center (NRC) in Cairo, Egypt. The objective of this joint research is to study the feasibility of combining pretreatment processes of cellulosic textiles with the goal of reducing the energy and chemicals used in pretreatment, and of reducing the large amounts of water used in the repeated washing operations, thus reducing the industrial water pollution. Two categories of textile fibers would be considered, cotton and cotton-blends, and flax. The first of these requires three pretreatments of desizing, scouring and bleaching, while flax fibers require scouring followed by three bleaching steps of hypochlorite, hydrogen peroxide and sodium chlorite. Each of these steps must be followed by washing, thus the huge requirements for water, chemicals, and energy, as well as the resulting pollution load. Scope: This research project will involve two experienced researchers from well respected institutes for textile research with complementary expertise and facilities. Solution of the problem they will address would have significant benefits to a major industry in both countries, and would have special environmental impact on countries where water use and polluted water discharge are problems. Egypt and several other developing countries rely extensively on their textile industries, and yet these are some of the most polluting industries for the water available for human use. The collaborating scientists plan to conduct laboratory tests, and to scale the studies to actual manufacturing scale. This proposal meets the INT objective of supporting US-foreign collaboration in areas that have benefits for both sides. This project is being supported under the US-Egy pt Joint Fund Program, which provides grants to scientists and engineers in both countries to carry out these cooperative activities. * * *