Sustainability: making low energy textiles breathable

The fashion industry employs millions of people globally and is worth trillions of dollars. It also accounts for a reported 10% of global carbon emissions and uses up to 2,700 litres of freshwater to produce enough cotton for a single regular t-shirt.  So the world is starting mass production other types of textiles – such as those produced seaweed.

However, even these new low energy and low environmental textiles need to become garments that are comfortable to wear, have good breathability and appropriate thermal conductivity.  All of these factors require garments to have vapour permeability.  Versaperm has introduced a new generation of its textile vapour permeability measurement equipment. 

The Versaperm system is easy to use and requires minimal training yet can produce results not just for water vapour and oxygen but for virtually any other gas – including CO2 which is increasingly used for supercritical dyeing.  

The equipment gives results that are accurate in the Parts Per Million (PPM) to Parts Per Billion (PPB) ranges and it can control environmental conditions such as saturation, temperature, pressure and diurnal cycles. It allows users to test both simple and multi-layer fabrics as well as measuring several samples or finished products at the same time.

As the ISO standard (15496:2004) for measuring the waterproofness, windproofness and breathability of textiles is gradually being overtaken by developments in technology, Versaperm has two separate systems for this task.  Firstly, a modern, highly controlled gravimetric system for compliance with the standard and secondly an instrumental system which is considerably faster, more repeatable and accurate.  

With some fabrics the instrumental system can produce results in as little as thirty minutes, as opposed to the days or weeks for any ISO-based system. 

However, for companies where their throughput is not high enough to warrant a dedicated instrument, Versaperm provides a laboratory testing service.

www.versaperm.com
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