Crosslinked Acrylic Acid Based Thickeners: Preparation and Performance in Reactive Printing of Cotton

Abstract

For economic and technical reasons, low solid content thickeners are desirable for printing cotton with reactive dyes. With this in mind, the crosslinking of an acrylic acid-based thickener (saponified acrylonitrile terpolymer) was attempted with multi valent metal salts and a bifunctional crosslinking reagent. As the concentration of aluminium sulphate increased, a tremendous increase in the viscosity occurred. At an aluminium sulphate concentration of 2.5% w/w and a formaldehyde content of 0.25% w/w, the crosslinked products showed the printable viscosities at solid contents of 1.5-2.0% and 0.5-1.0%, respectively. The performance of these products in the reactive printing of cotton is also detailed.