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.
