An Investigation of Polyester-Cotton Textiles using Photoacoustic Spectroscopy

Abstract

The conventional procedure used for the quantitative analysis of components in commercial textile products involves separation by dissolution of one of the individual components in a suitable solvent followed by a gravimetric determination. The British Standard method for the analysis of polyester-cotton mixtures involves the use of hot, concentrated sulphuric acid to dissolve the cotton component, allowing the mass of polyester to be determined (1). Other methods proposed for this determination include the use of sodium hydroxide (2) to dissolve the cotton and tetrachloroethane (3), 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexa-fluoropropan-2-ol (4), or ethanolamine (5) to dissolve the polyester. Although the precision and accuracy of these gravimetric procedures are advantageous the period of time necessary to perform each analysis is rather great and hazardous chemical reagents must be used.