Patent Application
20090173054
Textile fabric treatment typically includes bleaching vast amounts of greige fabric and then dyeing the fabric to a desired color for use in manufacturing various fabric articles such as clothing, household linens, and canvas. Unfortunately, the effluents produced by the treatment processes can be harmful to the environment, thus increasing the costs of manufacture of such fabrics to safeguard the environment. In addition, waste fabric resulting from trimming and cutting the fabric during the formation of fabric articles must be discarded. The waste is typically dumped into landfills or incinerated, thereby releasing harmful pollutants into the environment and/or atmosphere.
Accordingly, there exists a need to recapture and reuse the waste fabric material, particularly bleached and dyed materials formed of cotton. The present invention relates to the production of yarn from a blend of regenerated cotton fibers from waste fabric material and of natural hemp fibers. No further bleaching or dyeing of the yarn is necessary. The yarn can be woven or knit into new fabric for production of colorful and functional clothing, household linen, canvas and the like.
It is known in the art to produce a composite yarn formed of vegetable and cotton fibers as disclosed in Haughey U.S. Pat. No. 1,986,970. Among the vegetable fibers disclosed in Haughey are hemp. It is also known in the art to recycle cotton waste material by breaking the material down into fibers and then blend the recycled fibers with virgin cotton fibers to manufacture yarn having a recycled content as disclosed in the Heifetz U.S. Pat. No. 5,331,801.
While the composite yarns of the prior art are satisfactory, they each suffer from certain inherent drawbacks. Neither yarn comprises a composite of hemp and recycled cotton fibers which can be blended into fine count yarns for manufacturing a variety of fabrics without further treatment of the yarn and with minimal damage to the environment. The present invention was developed to provide such a yarn.
The invention relates to an eco-friendly yarn and a method for manufacturing the yarn. Waste cotton fabric is collected and sorted by color and the pieces of fabric of the same color are broken down into cotton fibers referred to as shoddy or fluff by a garnetting process. The cotton shoddy fibers are then blended with natural hemp fibers and spun into pre-dyed yarn. By recycling waste cotton fabric and combining the regenerated fibers derived therefrom with hemp fibers, a composite pre-dyed yarn is developed which is environmentally friendly and which does not require further bleaching, dyeing or treatment prior to weaving or knitting of the yarn into articles of clothing, household linens, or other fabric articles.
The finished yarn is between 30 and 45% recycled and regenerated cotton fibers which are generally shorter than the natural hemp fibers. Prior to spinning the fibers into yarn, they are blended and cleaned to remove any impurities from the mixture. Next, the blended fibers are carded to form aligned strands of fibers. The strands may be drawn roved into smaller finer strands depending on the type of fabric that the yarn is to be used to form. Finally, once the desired strand size has been obtained, the fibers are spun to form the finished yarn.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from a study of the following specification when viewed in light of the accompanying drawing in which,
Textile waste in the form of cuttings, trimmings and clippings is collected from manufacturing facilities around the world before it is discarded for deposit in a landfill or incinerated. The waste cotton fabric has previously been bleached and dyed, so additional treatment or dyeing is not required and therefore no additional industrial effluents which could add to the further pollution of the environment are produced.
The waste materials are sorted by color range and cleaned to remove any foreign material such as paper or metal from labels, buttons, or the like. Referring to
After garnetting, the regenerated cotton shoddy fibers are lined up in a row or arranged in a circular configuration to be blended by a vacuum head and separated into large tufts. Long natural hemp fiber on the order of three inches is added so that the cotton and hemp fibers are blended together 4.
Hemp fiber is produced by processing the stalks of the hemp plant (cannabis sativa L). Hemp is a member of the bast fiber genus which is grown and cultivated for the long sinuous bast fibers in the stalks which include herbaceous plants of dicoeyledons such as flax, hemp, sunn, denaf, jute and ramie. Hemp fiber is naturally organic and do not require the use of herbicides or pesticides. One acre of hemp can produce as much useable fiber as two acres of cotton without the need for intensive watering or fertilization as is required for traditional cotton farming. Hemp stalks are cut and left in the field for thirty to forty-five days to ret, a natural process that begins to separate the fibers. Once retted, the stalks are processed by decortication to separate the fibers into long and short fibers. The cut stalks are soaked in water and mechanically pulverized to remove and separate the fibers. The fibers are washed to remove the natural glues and then dried.
The tufts of cotton and hemp fiber are air blown into hoppers to clean the blended fibers of any remaining dirt or trash 6 prior to delivery to carding machines 8. The carding machines use air to align the fibers into a picker lap of parallel fibers. Any remaining dirt or other particulates are separated from the picker lap by the air flow. The picker lap is in the form of a sheet approximately forty inches wide and one inch thick. The sheet is then processed into a thin mist-like sheet by the carding machines and then formed into loose rope-like strands referred to as card-sliver.
A number of card-slivers are brought together and drawn out 10 to form a single rope like strand known as drawn sliver. The fibers of the drawn sliver are further straightened to improve uniformity. The drawn sliver is further drawn or stretched into smaller strands of fiber by roving 12. Finally, the sliver or rope is still further drawn out into a tiny strand of fibers and twisted or spun into yarn 14 using conventional open end spinning frames. With the fibers aligned in parallel and spun, they twist together until they cling to each other. The finished yarn counts range between 6s Ne and 28s Ne. The physical difference between the relatively short recycled cotton fibers, typically less than one inch, and the relatively long hemp fibers, on the order of three inches, results in a very strong yarn as the fibers tend to overlap and braid onto each other. The pre-dyed spun yarn is now suitable for knitting or weaving into colorful and functional apparel and home fashion textiles, without the need for bleaching, dyeing, or other treatment.
Preferably, the amount of cotton fiber in the yarn is less than the amount of hemp fiber. For example, the yarn may comprise 30-45% regenerated cotton fibers, with the balance comprising natural hemp fibers. The natural hemp fibers are neutral in color, so the resulting yarn takes on the color of the original cotton waste materials, although the color is muted somewhat by the blending of the hemp fibers.
The benefits of the yarn produced according to the method are many. First, no man-made fibers such as acrylic or polyester are used, which allows for the production of truly sustainable and eco-friendly yarns and subsequent woven and knit textile products. Since polyester and acrylic products are petroleum based, there is a net saving in energy cost. Because the cotton fibers originate from waste products of previously bleached, dyed or treated fabric, no further treatment, bleach, or dye is used, nor are the waste products deposited into landfills or incinerated. By blending natural hemp fibers with the regenerated cotton fibers, the fibers may be spun into finer count yarns to manufacture better quality products than are currently available with conventional regenerated cotton products. In addition, the yarn is stronger and more absorbent than conventional cotton yarn.
While the preferred forms and embodiments of the invention have been illustrated and described, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that various changes and modifications may be made without deviating from the inventive concepts set forth above.
