Eco-friendly bleaching of knitted cotton fabrics via acetylated starch as a bleach activator for H2O2
writer：Rui-Jie Zhu, Kai Liu, XuanZhang
keywords：Gray knitted cottonAcetylated starchBleach activatorH2O2-bleachingEco-friendly
source：期刊
specific source：International Journal of Biological Macromolecules 2025, 306, 141797.
Issue time：2025年
Bleach activators for H2O2 can notably lower bleaching temperature, leading to energy savings in cotton bleaching. However, biodegradable and nontoxic bleach activators are required to further achieve eco-friendly bleaching. Acetylated starch (AS), a saccharide derivative, has emerged as a promising candidate and not yet been explored as a bleach activator for cotton bleaching process. Herein, AS was prepared, characterized and utilized as an ecofriendly bleach activator for H2O2 in bleaching knitted cotton fabric. First, to further improve the aqueous dispersivity of the initial AS samples, AS nanospheres were fabricated via a nanoprecipitation procedure. The bleaching performance in terms of CIE whiteness index (WI) and H2O2 decomposition rate increased significantly at 70 °C with addition of AS. Degree of substitution (DS), AS dosage, NaOH concentration and bleaching temperature were also systematically investigated. Bleaching mechanism of the H2O2/AS system was further confirmed and proposed by using chemical computational analysis, peracetic acid determination and fluorescence detection experiments, respectively. Therefore, this H2O2/AS system can be a model system to gain a general understanding of saccharide derivative-based bleach activators. This work would greatly expand the range of bleach activators for cotton bleaching.