The New Cool Wool from Burlington Worldwide

Burlington Worldwide has added wool to its Cocona fabric line utilizing TrapTek LLC's Cocona activated carbon technology to offer evaporative cooling, UV protection and odor management.

Cocona, TrapTek LLC's patented innovative technology that incorporates activated carbon derived from recycled coconut shells into fibers and yarns, has received accolades as a natural, sustainable technology that provides evaporative cooling and moisture management, and traps odors and ultraviolet (UV) rays within the activated carbon's pore structure. The technology was developed in 2002 by Gregory W. Haggquist, Ph. D. - the Longmont, Colo. -based company's founder - and made its consumer market debut in 2006 in knitted cycling apparel developed by United Knitting, Cleveland, Tenn., and Bethel, Conn.-based Cannondale Bicycle Corp.

Last year, Burlington Worldwide (BWW), a business unit of Greensboro, N.C.-based International Textile Group Inc., received exclusive rights to develop, license and market woven fabrics using Cocona technology, first offering a line of man-made fiber fabrics primarily for active wear, and then adding cotton blends and entering more mainstream markets. Just recently, it added a collection of wool-blend fabrics to its Cocona line, which now includes about 20 man-made, 15 cotton and six to 10 wool styles.

According to Nelson Bebo, vice president of Burlington Labs, BWW's research and development division, BWW, with its global reach, has been working with TrapTek for 18 months to two years, and Burlington Labs was instrumental in bringing the Cocona technology into commercial yarn and fabric markets.

''TrapTek came up with some pretty interesting intellectual property (IP), but it was just a small IP company and needed help in commercializing the technology," Bebo said.

The nanoscale pore structure of activated coconut carbon used in Cocona^TM adsorbs moisture, odors and UV rays, which are then released during laundering using a scent-free detergent and drying using a heat source.

The Cocona^TM Story

The Cocona technology imbeds activated carbon from coconut shells into polyester or nylon polymers. The coconut shells, recycled waste from the food industry, are burned at 300C followed by a 1,000C steam-activation process. The activated carbon thus produced is imported by suppliers to water and air filtration, wastewater treatment, and other such industries. The microscopic, ultra-fine particles that are too small for those applications are just what TrapTek needs to incorporate into its fiber and yarn.

"Not only are we using a green material, but we're recycling what would have been thrown into landfills," said Jonathan Erb, a principal at TrapTek. ''This is encapsulated to provide a durable surface that allows the activated carbon to go through the very rigorous processing of polyester or nylon fibers and survive that process. The protective coating actually comes off during the course of fiber extrusion, and that releases activated carbon to be very much a part of that fiber."

According to Erb, the coconut shell's hardness, created by the nanometer-scale pore structure, gives it an advantage over softer activated carbon materials, which have fewer and bigger pores. The coconut pore structure is very complex, and the size of the pores is very even, he said. These pores adsorb moisture, odors and UV rays and through the exothermic adsorption process cause moisture to evaporate quickly. TrapTek says activated carbon from coconut shells exhibits a greater exothermic reaction than any other known substance, and garments containing Cocona activated carbon show 45-percent greater wick ability and significantly higher drying rates than garments offering conventional moisture management technologies.

Cocona fabrics and garments are rejuvenated and trapped odors removed by laundering using scent free detergents and drying using a heat source and no dryer sheets. Bebo said 60 to 70 percent of odors are removed during washing, and the heated drying causes the remaining odors to vibrate and move out of the pores.