Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Healthy Textile (Healthy Textile)
Reporting period: 2020-08-01 to 2022-01-31
Healthy Textile’s initial project scope was aimed at Scaling-up and commercialising a powerful and industrial laundry durable anti-microbial fabric finishing technology, primarily focused on catering to the need of the Healthcare industry for the mitigation of the Hospital Acquired Infections pandemic, which is taking a toll on millions of infected patients each year, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and over 50 billion EUR in financial loss to the EU and U.S. Healthcare industries alone. As a result of the covid pandemic, and the inability to perform clinical trials in the hospitals, Business Development (“BD”) activities were directed at other target markets, such as Sports wear, under wear, Outdoor wear, Automotive, Online high-performance healthcare wear, and Filtration (“target markets”). Sonovia has created a very extensive array of connections with global leading companies from the target markets and largely expended the market awareness to the novel technology.
Impact: Sonovia’s platform technology has vast implications on the future of the textile industry in terms of the environment, performance, and durability. As environmental regulations will continue to increase, EU based textile manufacturers will face with two possibilities – Adopt readily available enabling technologies that are in compliance with the regulations, or close their operation. Historically the textile industry has been an integral part of Europe, and still employing 2.5m EU citizens to this day. The impact of broad closures of textile factories and mass lay-offs of employees will have a severe and negative impact on the EU, and will result in increased burden on the social un-employment dedicated funds, the quality of living of these citizens, and potentially results in more acute negative implications on the EU in the form of increased crime and drug use. Novel and sustainable manufacturing technologies can enable the EU to maintain its textile industry, to continue to employ millions of people, while minimising its environmental impact, and the Sono platform technology has the potential to lead this front and become the incumbent replacement to the currently polluting textile finishing & dyeing methods.
Impact: Sonovia’s platform technology has vast implications on the future of the textile industry in terms of the environment, performance, and durability. As environmental regulations will continue to increase, EU based textile manufacturers will face with two possibilities – Adopt readily available enabling technologies that are in compliance with the regulations, or close their operation. Historically the textile industry has been an integral part of Europe, and still employing 2.5m EU citizens to this day. The impact of broad closures of textile factories and mass lay-offs of employees will have a severe and negative impact on the EU, and will result in increased burden on the social un-employment dedicated funds, the quality of living of these citizens, and potentially results in more acute negative implications on the EU in the form of increased crime and drug use. Novel and sustainable manufacturing technologies can enable the EU to maintain its textile industry, to continue to employ millions of people, while minimising its environmental impact, and the Sono platform technology has the potential to lead this front and become the incumbent replacement to the currently polluting textile finishing & dyeing methods.
In the 1st reporting period the chemistry and process route started with the In-situ approach. Initial industrial pilot trials were held, displaying very good anti-microbial/viral efficacy and durability to washings, however, it became very apparent that the “In-situ” approach is hard to not commercial for various reasons, and as a result, Healthy Textile decided to revise its chemistry route, and to focus on ready made nano-particles and formulations. This pivot was proven to be effective, and in the 2nd reporting period the “ready-made formulations” approach continued and yielded outstanding results.
Upon additional industrial trials with the “ready-made” formulas, it became clear that the machine set-up at that time was not efficient enough and had to be modified, and a new industrial ultrasonic fabric finishing machine was designed with an expected installation of Q4/2021. Despite working on both ZnO and Silver based formulations, the ZnO formulation is superior in all respects and will be commercialized first as an anti-odor agent, in parallel to additional regulatory activities in approving the product as an anti-bacterial agent. The use of biocidal agents as “anti-odor” agents is a vastly exploited approach by leading suppliers of textile finishing agents, as it reduces their investment in the required compliance, without jeopardizing any key markets, as most of the markets are using these products for anti-odour purposes, examples for that can be found in sportswear, whereas every major brand adopted an anti-odour feature in its products, in automotive, in which bad odour is a major user experience challenge, as well as in other apparel use-cases such as intimate wear.
As an example of the significant achievement of this project, hereunder the results of a pilot test requested by a globally leading OEM/ODM, to pass a modified AATCC100 anti-microbial test, whereas there are two challenging bacteria strains – (a) MRSA, (b) E.coli in addition to the traditional (c) Klebsiella pneumoniae, the test is done after 2 hours of bacteria incubation, and after 75 home laundries at 60 degree Celsius and at medium wash strength. Tested on a PA-78%/Elastan-22% 190gsm fabric treated with 1.2% w/w ZnO the results were – (a) 99.642% efficacy againt MRSA, (b) 99.534% efficacy against K.Pneumoniae and (c) 98.697% efficacy against E.coli. To the best of our, the lab’s, and the OEM/ODM’s, knowledge, the above results cannot be achieved with any competing chemistry in the traditional fabric finishing method.
Upon additional industrial trials with the “ready-made” formulas, it became clear that the machine set-up at that time was not efficient enough and had to be modified, and a new industrial ultrasonic fabric finishing machine was designed with an expected installation of Q4/2021. Despite working on both ZnO and Silver based formulations, the ZnO formulation is superior in all respects and will be commercialized first as an anti-odor agent, in parallel to additional regulatory activities in approving the product as an anti-bacterial agent. The use of biocidal agents as “anti-odor” agents is a vastly exploited approach by leading suppliers of textile finishing agents, as it reduces their investment in the required compliance, without jeopardizing any key markets, as most of the markets are using these products for anti-odour purposes, examples for that can be found in sportswear, whereas every major brand adopted an anti-odour feature in its products, in automotive, in which bad odour is a major user experience challenge, as well as in other apparel use-cases such as intimate wear.
As an example of the significant achievement of this project, hereunder the results of a pilot test requested by a globally leading OEM/ODM, to pass a modified AATCC100 anti-microbial test, whereas there are two challenging bacteria strains – (a) MRSA, (b) E.coli in addition to the traditional (c) Klebsiella pneumoniae, the test is done after 2 hours of bacteria incubation, and after 75 home laundries at 60 degree Celsius and at medium wash strength. Tested on a PA-78%/Elastan-22% 190gsm fabric treated with 1.2% w/w ZnO the results were – (a) 99.642% efficacy againt MRSA, (b) 99.534% efficacy against K.Pneumoniae and (c) 98.697% efficacy against E.coli. To the best of our, the lab’s, and the OEM/ODM’s, knowledge, the above results cannot be achieved with any competing chemistry in the traditional fabric finishing method.
The impact of the Sono technology on the textile industry in the environmental sense, as well as elevating performance and durability, is extensive and far reaching. Sonovia’s technology is a platform technology enabling the development of sustainable and high-performing alternatives to all currently used textile applications. The impact of the Sono technology on the European textile industry can be extensive and far reaching. With the increase in environmental related legislation and restrictions on EU based textile manufacturers, Sonovia’s technology may be a superior enabling technology that will allow the manufacturers to continue to be compliant with the new legislations while not having a production cost increase (and even a decrease) and while not compromising on performance (and even increasing performance).