Foam Finishing Treatment of Cotton Fabrics with Formaldehyde

A fractional factorial design of experiments was used in studying the formaldehyde release and bound formaldehyde content of cotton printcloth treated with formaldehyde (HCHO). Foam application of the HCHO with Zn(NO 3 ) 2 .6H 2 O catalysis was used at wet pickups (WPU) up to 40%. Statistical analysis of the formaldehyde property data by multiple stepwise regression indicated that interactions of processing variables were responsible for (or correlated with) a substantial portion of the variability in the formaldehyde release and bound formaldehyde properties. The multiple regression model equation for bound formaldehyde did not contain the reaction time variable.