AN IMPROVED PROCESS FOR PURIFYING OR TREATING WOOL
Year: 1868

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Clinton Edgcumbe Brooman at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 2nd September 1868.-A communication from abroad by Joseph
Fraenkel, of Elbeuf, France.
I, CLINTON EDGCUMBE BROOMAN, of the Firm of Robertson,
Brooman, and Company, of 166, Fleet Street, in the City of London,
Patent Agents, dó hereby declare the nature of the said Invention
for "AN IMPROVED PROCESS FOR PURIFYING OR TREATING WOOL," to be as
follows:-
The object of this Invention is to submit raw or manufactured wool
to a preparation by a damp process, without the aid of the machines
'ordinarily employed, for the purpose of depriving it of all vegetable
matters, and to suit it for receiving all kinds of dyes by the neutrali-
zation of the chemical agents employed.
The process is applicable to wool which is intended to remain white,
and to wool to be dyed in any colors, whether with fast or permanent
dyes, with a base of indigo blue and with a base of cyanide, or with
fugitive or fading dyes of any
shade.

page_text: The process embraces the following consecutive operations:―
1st. Cleansing or scouring of the raw wool by means of salts of soda,
crystals of soda, urine, and fullers' earth. The bath would be composed
of about 1,000 quarts of water, 50 lbs. of salt of soda, 60 quarts of urine
at 3-2 degrees strength, and 25 to 35 lbs. of fullers' earth, but these
proportions will vary according to the nature of the wool and the
temperature of the time of year.
2nd. Washing in water to deprive the wool of the fatty and other
matters dissolved by the salt of soda.
3rd. Immersion of the wool for about 4 hours in a bath of water and
sulphuric acid; the strength of the bath being 4 degrees when cold.
4th. Drying of the wool at a temperature of about 100° to 125°
Fahrenheit.
5th. Beating of the wool to cause the destroyed vegetable part to
'fall out.
6th. Immersion for from an hour to two hours, with agitation of
the wool, in a bath of chalk or other material with an alkaline base,
än order to neutralize or eliminate the sulphuric acid remaining in
the wool. This bath is composed, for example, of from 7 to 12 lbs.
of chalk to 1,000 quarts of water. I. can substitute for the bath of
chalk for neutralizing the acid any alkaline chemical agent in the state
of vapor or in the volatilized state, to which I submit the wool after
drying in order to eliminate the said acid. The wool is thus purified
or cleansed and brought to a desirable state of softness either to be
:submitted when white to the usual preparations for spinning and weaving,
or to be dyed with permanent dyes with a base of indigo, or with
fugitive dyes of any shade without a base of indigo.
The process has thus a double result, viz., either to cleanse and soften
the wool to fit it for spinning, or to bring it to a good state for dyeing.
One of the important features of the process is the neutralizing of the
action of the sulphuric acid on the colors by submitting the wool after
drying either, to a bath of chalk, or to the action of an alkaline
chemical agent in the state of vapor or in the volatilized state.
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