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The objective of Duratex is developing water and oil repellent as well as antimicrobial textiles for building and architectural applications. The developed methodologies will comply with the requirements of the textile industry (cost, production speed, acquiring complex functionalities), will be eco-friendly and applicable with existing equipment (no specific investments needed and fast implementable).

The future European legislations which will ban the use of C8 fluorocarbons (FC), which are water and oil repellent, as well as the use of certain biocides problematic for our environment (regulation 528/2012) like (nano)silver, will be taken into account.

Three approaches are visualised to obtain water and oil repellent characteristics 1) deposition of nanoparticles and nanofibres followed by chemical modification based on branched hydrocarbons, 2) sol-gel hybrid layers, 3) deposition of layers via local solution-reprecipitation using green solvents.

Next to this, biobased products or non-toxic biocides (e.g. metal oxides) will be incorporated in coatings or in yarns to obtain antibacterial properties.

 

The results consist of:

1) database of ecological additives and formulations to obtain antimicrobial, water and oil repellent characteristics;

2) knowledge acquisition about regulations concerning biocides and FC;

3) requirements concerning use of these additives in the envisaged end applications;

4) recommendations concerning application of nanoparticles/nanofibres, sol-gel hybrid or local solution-reprecipitation for water and oil repellent textiles and their compatibility with antimicrobial formulations;

5) realisation of the desired coatings and yarns via eco-compatible processes

6) improving durability of the treatments due to environmental factors.

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