Modelling of the Wool Textile Finishing Processes

Within wool textile industries, a very important role is played by the so-called finishing processes, in which the textile substrate undergoes steam treatments to achieve the desired level of stabilisation and appearance. Process parameters, namely temperature and moisture content, are known only at the beginning of the process but not in the textile material being treated, where the actual physicochemical effects takes place. They have been evaluated during time dependent simulations, showing a fast increase of the fibre temperature which reaches values higher than the steam one, due to the heat of moisture sorption, whereas the moisture content increases very slowly, demonstrating that the diffusion coefficient of water molecules into the fibre is the limiting factor of the whole process.