WO2004035926A1

WO2004035926A1 - Method of manufacturing tissue papers

Info

Publication number: WO2004035926A1
Application number: PCT/KR2002/002228
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jung-Hun Choi
Original assignee: E-Papertec Co., Ltd.
Priority date: 2002-10-16
Filing date: 2002-11-28
Publication date: 2004-04-29
Also published as: WO2004035926A8; AU2002368289A1; KR20040033855A

Abstract

Disclosed is a method of manufacturing tissue papers having antifungal and antibacterial activity for sanitary wipes and facial applications, comprising the steps of: mixing 1-5 wt% of stearic acid, 5-15 wt% of mineral oil and 3-8 wt% of caprylictriglycerin in a bath with stirring to give a first mixture; mixing with stirring 0.01-0.03 wt% of a functional drug, 0.01-0.03 wt% of propylene glycol, 0.01-0.02 wt% of benzoic acid and purified water to give a second mixture; mixing the first mixture with the second mixture, in which the ingredients of the first mixture are solubilized in the second mixture by being dispersed into a fine state using a surfactant; adding silver powder to the resulting composition at various amounts of 0.1-1000 ppm depending on use of tissue papers to which the final composition will be applied; and applying the final composition to a tissue paper web by coating or impregnation.

Description

METHOD OF MANUFACTURING TISSUE PAPERS

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing tissue papers having antifungal and antibacterial activity for sanitary wipes and facial applications. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method of manufacturing tissue papers containing silver powder which is a natural antifungal and antibacterial substance.

PRIOR ART

With the development of industries and human culture, health and pleasant environment are emerging as main interests in the modern society. In particular, to preserve the health of infants, women and the elderly in an unhealthy residential environment, there is a need to remove offensive odor, fungi, bacteria, and the like from the contaminated environment. Harmful fungi and bacteria have been generally inactivated or killed using organic fungicides or bactericides, but the organic compounds are known to be harmful to humans and animals and to pollute the environment. In this regard, nontoxic inorganic compounds are now used instead of the organic compounds, and a variety of efforts have been made to develop colloidal preparations of below 1/1000 of a hair in size.

Silver (Ag), which belongs to IB group of the periodic table, has been widely used as a precious metal having a light blue color and beautiful sheen, along with gold. Silver has the highest malleability and ductility next to gold, and can be used in preparing a silver foil of 0.0015 mm in thickness. In addition, 1 g of silver can produce a wire of 1,800 m in length. When being melted, silver occludes a large amount of oxygen from air, while emitting oxygen when being coagulated. Silver is stable in water and air containing oxygen. However, silver changes into silver peroxide (Ag₂O₂) of black color when reacting with ozone, while changing into silver sulfide (Ag₂S) of black color when reacting with sulfur or hydrogen sulfide. Also, silver does not react with hydrogen, carbon, carbonic acid, etc., even at high temperature, but is eroded by halogen.

Silver is refined from an ore containing silver according to the same process as for refining gold, that is, amalgamation, cyaniding or dry processing, in which the amalgam process is now rarely used. Silver is a good conductor of heat and electricity, and is widely applied as a metal material owing to its mechanical property of good processability. Silver is known to react with toxic materials and thus change its color to blue, and to be beneficial for human health, thereby having been used as a material in manufacturing spoons and chopsticks for a long time. During the settling of the American West, silver was found to prevent milk from going bad. In addition, silver is known to benefit the five viscera, namely, liver, lungs, heart, kidneys and spleen, stabilize the mind and a body, and purge noxious vapor and thus lighten the mind and body, resulting in extension of life expectancy, as described in the Chinese herbal medicine guideline "botanical list". Further, looking at prior research on silver and its uses, a silver solution can completely kill over 650 species of bacteria and even viruses within 6 minutes without harmful side effect. Because of being proven to have excellent effect in killing bacteria and fungi and thus inhibiting the growth of germs harmful for the body, colloidal silver received approval for use as an antibiotic from the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and was selected for use in purification systems in a NASA space shuttle of U.S.A., by more than half of airline companies in the world and in the Swiss government. Also, according to a quality test by the certification body Korea Institute of Construction Materials (KICM), a silver synthetic fiber has antifungal effect 90-fold higher than a natural fiber, and has antifungal activity of 96.9 % even after washing.

Korean Pat. Publication No. 2000-250707, registered in Jan. 6, 2000, discloses a method of preparing water- wet tissue papers, in which a water- wet tissue paper is prepared by diluting a colloidal silver solution formed by decomposing pure silver to fine particles under low temperature and low electric current in water filtered through a silver filter, not containing dyes, heavy metals or lime, adding the surfactant sodium isethionate and the flavoring agent ethyl acetoacetate to the colloidal silver dilute, and impregnating the mixture into a water-wet tissue paper.

The above method of preparing water- wet tissue papers containing colloidal silver is suitable for manufacturing water-wet tissue papers, but not dried facial tissues or toilet tissues.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION

Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method of manufacturing tissue papers having antifungal and antibacterial activity for sanitary wipes and facial applications and thus capable of protecting skin of women and infants, in which silver powder having excellent antibacterial and antifungal activity is applied to the tissue papers.

BEST MODES FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION

The present invention is directed to a method of manufacturing tissue papers having antifungal and antibacterial activity for sanitary wipes and facial applications and thus capable of protecting skin of women and infants, through application of silver powder having excellent antibacterial and antifungal activity to a tissue paper, with which disadvantages encountered in the conventional sanitary and facial tissues can be overcome. In accordance with the present invention, silver in a powder form is used.

Silver has characters of poor dispersion, insolubility in water and low density. Owing to such characters, silver cannot be easily applied for coating or impregnation. To resolve the problem, in accordance with the present invention, a composition containing silver powder is utilized, in which silver powder is suitably contained in various concentrations of 0.1-1000 ppm depending on intention of use of a tissue paper to which the composition will be applied, taking into consideration desired antibacterial and antifunal activity, perfume, etc.

According to use of the tissue paper, if desired, the composition containing silver powder may further comprise a functional drug, an auxiliary drug and an additive at predetermined amounts.

Examples of the functional drug may include aldehydes (e.g., phenylacete aldehyde), alcohols (e.g., 2-phenylethanol), isoamyl salicylic acid, geraniol, terbins, and mixtures thereof. Examples of the auxiliary drug may include unsaturated fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, caprylictriglycerin, mimeticon, stearic acid, propylene glycol, benzoic acid, and mixtures thereof.

The additive may be selected from the group consisting of dispersing agents, solubilizers (surfactants), and mixtures of thereof. In detail, in a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a facially applied sanitary tissue having antifungal activity is prepared as follows.

A first mixture is prepared by mixing 1-5 wt% of stearic acid, 5-15 wt% of mineral oil and 3-8 wt% of caprylictriglycerin in a bath with stirring. Separately, a second mixture is prepared by mixing with stirring 0.01-0.03 wt% of a functional drug, 0.01-0.03 wt% of propylene glycol, and 0.01-0.02 wt% of benzoic acid in purified water. The first mixture is mixed with the second mixture, in which the ingredients of one of the first and second mixtures are solubilized in the other mixture by being dispersed into a fine state using a surfactant, and silver powder is then added to the resulting composition at various amounts of 0.1-1000 ppm depending on use of tissue papers to which the final composition will be applied. Then, the final composition is applied to a tissue paper web by coating or impregnation.

Through the above solubilization, synthetic polymers, including polyvinylalcohol, polymetacryl acid, polyethylene imine and polystyrene sulfonic acid, and biological macromolecules, including serum albumin, β-lactoglobulin, DNA and insulin, are known to be easily solubilized. The phenomena of increasing solubility of poorly water-soluble materials using a large amount of aromatic sulfonic acid, aromatic carboxic acid, phenols, alcohols, pyrolidones or urea is called hydrotropy. Valuable vitamins or hormones may be used in the present invention by the conventional techniques in the art, such as solubilization, to give vitamins or hormones a hydrophilic character, or to combine them with a biocide such as phenols to improve effects of the vitamins or hormones, or a method of stimulating emulsion polymerization. In addition, the silver powder, the functional drug, the auxiliary drug and the additive may be selected from those commercially available. The prepared composition containing silver powder may be applied to a tissue paper by a mixing method, a surface coating method, a surface absorbing method, or a surface reacting method, thus providing antifugal activity to the tissue paper, and the mixing and coating methods are used together in the present invention.

INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY

As described hereinbefore, the method of manufacturing tissue papers according to the present invention provides tissue papers having antibacterial and antifungal activity higher than the conventional tissues, and of being nontoxic to the body and maintaining the activity for a long period of time. Through a testing for antibacterial and antifungal activity of the tissue papers against various pathogenic germs, the tissue papers were found to kill all the pathogenic germs cultured on solid culture media. In addition, the composition containing silver powder used in preparing the tissue papers can be applied for various products at various amounts, and has excellent antibacterial and antifungal activity and thus effectively protecting skin of women and infants.

Claims

1. A method of manufacturing tissue papers, comprising the steps of: mixing 1-5 wt% of stearic acid, 5-15 wt% of mineral oil and 3-8 wt% of caprylictriglycerin in a bath with stirring to give a first mixture; mixing with stirring 0.01-0.03 wt% of a functional drug, 0.01-0.03 wt% of propylene glycol, 0.01-0.02 wt% of benzoic acid and purified water to give a second mixture; mixing the first mixture with the second mixture, in which the ingredients of one of the first and second mixtures are solubilized in the other mixture by being dispersed into a fine state using a surfactant; adding silver powder to the resulting composition at various amounts of 0.1-1000 ppm depending on use of tissue papers to which the final composition will be applied; and applying the final composition to a tissue paper web by coating or impregnation.