Abstract

Flammability of fibrous products is one of the major problems posed to scientists and technologists at the present time. The U.S national projection for fires caused by textiles per year based on averages computed for 1977-1978 is 214,800. Fires would cause deaths, injuries. All fiber and textile products may be involved in starting of fires. A fire involving wear clothing appears to be the most dangerous and shows the highest rate of deaths per fire. Hazards from flammable fabrics were recognized for many centuries and repeated attempts have been made to cope with them. One of the first recorded efforts in this direction was made in 1735 by Jonathan Wyld of England, who patented a flame retarding mixture of alum, ferrous sulfate and borax. Gay-Lussac in 1821 developed a flame retarding finish for jute and linen based on borax, ammonium phosphate and chloride. Many further attempts were made by scientists to reduce fire hazards by introducing fire retardant treatment and suitable clauses in fabric specifications. In this paper we are focused on the fire retardant treatment of jute fabrics with different chemicals and observing fabric physical parameters.

Introduction

Jute is a natural fibre composed of cellulose, lignin, hemicellulose, waxes and protein mineral matters. Due to inroad of synthetic fibres the conventional use of jute products is declined. Hence it needs diversification. This is why it is essential to make jute fabric attractive by different value added finish. For promotions of uses of jute as protective textiles it can be made fire retardant. Hence in the present work jute fabrics has been subjected to different type of fire retardant treatment to get fire retardant jute based fabrics for the said purpose and research has been undertaken to study the physical parameters of fire retardant jute fabrics.

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The author is associated with the Institute of Jute Technology, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata.

This article is prepared with the advise of Dr. A K Samanta from the Institute of Jute Technology