CHITOSAN ADDED COMPOSITE VISCOSE YARN AND ITS POTENTIAL APPLICATION FOR DENIM FABRIC DEVELOPMENT

The rapid increase in consumption has led to the decrease and even extinction of natural resources on earth. The textile industry also has an important place in terms of consumption. The transition to more sustainable biodegradable products instead of established fossil-based materials has increased rapidly due to textile manufacturers and related industries, legal regulations, social responsibility commitments and increasing ecological awareness of customers. Developing new environmentally friendly, biodegradable material groups with new technologies or by modifying existing technologies has been the main goal of many researchers. In this context, we aimed to develop denim fabric that is effective against strong hospital bacteria by using the yarn containing biopolymer chitosan as a weft in denim production. Chitosan finds wide application in the textile industry due to its biodegradability, antibacterial activity and many more functionalities. Chitosan is used in biomedical textile applications in the textile industry, either as a wound healing, hemostatic (blood stopper), antibacterial, antifungal, either alone or modified to various derivatives or combined with other materials. In this context, instead of using chitosan as a coating material in our studies, chitosan-containing yarn was used in the production of denim fabric in order to distribute the chitosan more homogeneously and to increase the washing resistance. As a result, it was determined that the denim fabric developed by using chitosan-based yarn in weft in denim production reduces hospital bacteria (MRSA-Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus) by > 99%.