US981008A - Process of scouring wool. - Google Patents

Description

PETER SGHMID, OF BASEL, SWITZERLAND.

rnoonss or SCOURING WOOL.

No Drawing.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Application filed January 4, 1910.

PatentedJ an. 10, 1911.

Serial No. 536,361.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that 1, PETER SoHMID, a citizen of the Swiss Republic, and resident of Basel, Switzerland, have invented a new and useful Process for Scouring Wool, of which the following is a full, clear, and exact specification.

The scouring of wool in form of flocks, fleeces, slivers, threads, webs, cloths, networks, knittings etc., as hitherto carried out, is based on the treatment of the wool with a cold or hot, alkaline or soapy, liquid bath. This treatment of the wool with a liquid bath has certain disadvantages which can be avoided by my present improvement, which consists in substituting for the liquid bath at present employed a bath or lather of soapy water which may or may not contain an alkali, an alkaline salt or other known scouring ingredient.

In order to prepare such a lather bath, an aqueous soapy solution is introduced into a scouring vessel, or vat, provided at its bottom with a heating coil, the said solution being then heated to the boiling point by feeding the said coil with steam, or other heating agent, capable of maintaining the soapy solution in ebullition. The upper part of the vat or vessel will thus be filled up with a lather bath, which will remain, or be maintained, as long as the heating of the soapy solution is continued. The wool to be scoured is manipulated in this lather bath, or conducted through this latter, in such a manner that it cannot come into contact with the soapy liquid. This latter may have the same concentration as the liquid scouring baths at present used and contain, besides the soap, other scouring ingredients.

To carry out the new scouring process, for" instance for scouring wool slivers, the apparatus shown in the accompanying drawing may be employed.

a is an open scouring vat or vessel provided at its bottom with a heating-coil 5, covered by the liquid of the scouring bath 0. The upper part of the vat or vessel or, contains a large number of rotatable rollers d, 6, over which the wool slivers g to be scoured are conducted, in a slow movement, through the lather f formed above the bath 0 and filling the upper part of the vat a.

The above described use of a scouring bath in the form of lather offers the following advantages: 1. The felting of the goods is considerably reduced, hence lather baths can be employed, which have a higher temperature than the liquid bath at present employed, and consequently the duration of the treatment can be shortened. 2. When cloths, knittings, threads or slivers etc. are scoured their treatment with a lather bath removes less wool down therefrom, than when they are treated with a liquid. 3. When dyed cloths, knittings, threads or slivers are scoured with a lather bath, the dyed materials will lose less of their freshness and'of their vividness than when they are treated with a liquid bath.

The transformation of the soapy scouring liquid bath into lather may be aided by injecting finely divided air under pressure into the liquid soapy solution contained in the vator vessel.

What I claim is:

l. The herein described process of scouring wool, consisting in first making a scouring bath containing soap, then treating the wool with the lather only of the said bath, the wool not being submerged in the bath, and finally washing the wool thus treated.

2. The herein described process of scouring wool, consisting in first making a scouring bath containing soap, then treating the wool with the lather only of the said bath obtained by heating said bath to'the boiling point inthe presence of air, the-wool not being submerged in the bath, and finally washing the wool thus treated.

3. The herein described process of scouring wool, consisting in first making a scouring bath containing soap, then treating the wool withthe lather only of the said bath obtained by heating said bath to the boiling point and injecting air in said bath, the wool not being submerged in the bath, and finally washing the wool thus treated.

In witness whereof I have hereunto signed my name this 22d day of December 1909, in the presence of two subscribing witnesses.

PETER SCHMID.

Witnesses:

GEO. Girronn, AMAND Rims.