Preparation of carboxymethyl cellulose nanofibers and their application in warp size of textile

How to develop the warp sizing process with energy saving and emission reduction have been a problem for the textile sizing industry. In this work, a series of carboxymethyl cellulose nanofibers (CCNFs) with different degree of substitution (DS) were prepared from bleached eucalyptus kraft pulp, and their applications in warp size of textile were investigated in detail. AFM and TEM analyses confirmed that the prepared CCNFs were of nanoscale fibers. Zeta potential analysis showed that CCNFs aqueous dispersion had good stability. Response surface methodology was applied to optimize the high-count cotton warp sizing formula containing a small amount of CCNFs. It could be found that the optimized sizing formula still had much better sizing performance than that of the original sizing formula even if the sizing percentage and temperature were reduced. The results exhibited that CCNFs with DS of 0.38 had a potential industry application prospect as sizing auxiliary in pure cotton warp sizing, and the new developed sizing formula had the advantages of excellent sizing performance, environmental friendliness, energy saving and emission reduction.