EUREKA project E! 2709 BASTEX's new antibacterial additives for PP based clothing

04 Oct '06

3 min read

One of the problems protective clothing and sportswear manufacturers are faced with is finding a polypropylene-based fabric which remains comfortable and hygienic to its users. EUREKA project E! 2709 BASTEX has developed new antibacterial additives which can be incorporated into polypropylene material to produce high-performance clothing.

The outcome of this project has been so successful that results have been adapted to bed linen in hospitals and other healthcare establishments – creating an important growth in the market.

Protective clothing and sportswear needs to be tough and resilient to physical strain, so a fabric based on polypropylene is ideal. But unlike wool or cotton, polypropylene is not absorbent of sweat, so fabric made from it quickly becomes unpleasant to use.

The participant in the BASTEX project worked on resolving this problem by selecting the optimum features for antibacterial additives and developing antibacterial-incorporated polypropylene fibres and textile materials based on these fibres.

Eliminating unpleasant odours
V-C is the Slovak Republic's professional research institute for textile chemistry, textile and clothing manufacture. Its own role in the project was to develop selected types of antimicrobial additive, or biostat. Project coordinator Dr Jozef Šesták of V-C describes how it developed a new biostat with an inorganic base.

“All additives previously used for this purpose had an organic chemical carrier, which has an unpleasant smell for the user and can give rise to environmental problems when the time comes for disposal. Our new antibacterial additives are a major improvement on existing antibacterials because they use inorganic carriers. The new biostat is much more acceptable to those who will wear the final protective clothing and avoids the environmental problems.”

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