IMPROVEMENTS IN THE PROCESS OF MACERATING AND TREATING TEXTILE FIBROUS MATERIAL AND IN APPARATUS THEREFOR."
Year: 1880

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Walter Alfred Barlow at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 22nd May 1880. A communication from
abroad by Monsieur Honoré Brunet, of Paris, France.
$6
WALTER ALFRED BARLOW, of 6, St. Paul's Churchyard, London, Patent Agent
and Engineer. IMPROVEMENTS IN THE PROCESS OF MACERATING AND TREATING
TEXTILE FIBROUS MATERIAL AND IN APPARATUS THEREFOR." A communication
from abroad by Monsieur Honoré Brunet, of Paris, France.
This Invention relates to a nearly instantaneous process of maceration and
complete treatment of all vegetable textile materials, but principally of flax, hemp,
and the fibre yielding grasses, such as China grass, rhea grass, and esparto, of the
silken textile material of bark, of the annually cut branches of the mulberry tree, in
short of all vegetable textile material, whether green or dry, decorticated or not, or
having already been subjected to an imperfect or defective maceration treatment.
This process of decortication, of maceration, and treatment of the said textile
materials has for object to render them fit to be employed, either combed without
carding or combed after carding, or carded only, or spun by hand or by machinery,
the process effecting the entire separation and dissolving of the resinous gummy
substances which unite the fibres.
The following are the means employed in carrying out the Invention:-
In a boiler of galvanised sheet iron or other metal, from three to six feet long,
according to the length of the textile fibre or bark to be operated upon, and about
2 ft. 6 in. to 3 ft. wide, is placed the vegetable material, from which the roots and
useless portions have been cut, either at gathering or subsequently, and the opposite
extremities are also cut off, and which contain a portion of textile matter which
would be likely to become entangled and impede the operation, and the extremities
so cut off are separately treated, as will be further explained, care being taken to
employ material of corresponding length and substance.
The boiler is placed upon a longitudinal brick built furnace, the door of the said
furnace being at one end in order that the sides of the boiler may remain free. If
the textile materials to be operated upon are in quantity four boilers are used, of
which two are end to end, heated by two or four furnaces fixed in brickwork, with
one or several chimney stacks placed in the middle. The said boilers are provided
with boiling water coming through pipes from one or several large boilers, and the
said water is maintained at the boiling point by the means of the furnaces. The
vegetable materials, green or dry stems, green or dry bark, or textile fibres, are
boiled with regularity during thirty or sixty minutes; the vegetable materials are
tied up in bundles of equal size, and bound at the larger end with very strong

page_text: white thread and afterwards placed in the boiler, the large ends alternately at each
side.
The water in which the vegetable materials are boiled is a weak soap wash of
hard soap, by preference made from fatty matter and soda (no potash) previously
prepared in a cask by using boiling water to melt the soap.
After the boiling process the bundles are taken out from the boilers, which have
been previously emptied so as to allow of the water to drop away from, and so
cool them more rapidly; then the binding string is removed and the separate stems
of fibrous material are seized by the operator in one hand, and with the fingers of
the other hand by a squeezing stripping action the superfluous matter is drawn
off from the fibre proper, which last remains in the hand, and the separation or
decortication is complete and perfect, and that without any breakage or damage of
the fibre, whilst the manipulation is very rapidly effected.
For the textile material produced by plants, trees, and shrubs analogous to the
mulberry, the green material only is operated upon by the same process of decorti-
cation. From the fresh bark there may be chemically obtained either starch or
sugar, which is contained in the wood of the branches, the which constitutes a
double product.
The fibrous material that still remains insufficiently treated, if any, after being
mixed in soapy water of a temperature of about 90° centigrade, are retied into
bundles and replaced in the boiler or boilers, and are reboiled for from thirty to sixty
minutes, according to the substance of the material under treatment, but without
the boiling liquor being made stronger of soap, after which the bundles are again
removed as before, and are successively rinsed in two or three baths of soapy water
of about 60° temperature, when they will be perfectly white.
For textile material of great fineness, as of mulberry bark, fine flax and grasses,
there is to be employed for the last washing bath, a fine soap of the same nature,
with the addition of lard or other refined fatty matter. These last operations are
carried out in tubs, below which are pipes with taps for hot and cold water. The
various baths, with the exception of the first, wherein the boiling is effected, and
which is run off, also serves for the other operations of the maceration which
proceeds the rinsing.
The fibres thus obtained are dried in the open air by daylight (but not in the
sun) and they have somewhat the appearance of a sliver doubled together for
facility of holding, and are of the whole original length of the material that has
been treated, and the fibres are laid so that the sliver will be of uniform size, and
when put end to end on the combing machine after a simple preparation will not
require carding, which said operation is so detrimental to the fibres, which are
thereby cut and broken. Thus the natural strength and length of the fibres are
preserved.
If certain of the fibrous materials have by chance been slightly tainted by the
tannic acid of the pellicles, of remaining after the dry rubbing of some of the
barks or plants, and that also after shaking, there is to be added to the bath which
follows the boiling a slight addition of bypo-chloride of potash or of sulphuric acid,
but this is exceptional and the quantity must be almost untraceable in the bath.
For treating the cut off ends of the fibres as before referred to; they are treated
in a like manner to the long fibres in the macerating bath and rinsing baths of
soap and water until perfectly white, whether the materials be dry or green. After
drying the products thus obtained, and mixed or not with wood or straw, are put
into a mechanical or hand beater for separating all foreign matter from the textile
material, which is again put into a last soap bath, and after drying may be carded
and combed or carded and spun.