Cotton Fiber | Physical And Chemical Properties Of Cotton

Cotton fiber is a cellulosic fiber. It has worldwide popularity for its variety of use. Cotton fiber is the most used fibers for producing various types of fabric through all over the world. Cotton Fabrics are comfortable to wear than the other fibers product. It is comfort to wear in all the season.



Like all the textile fibers, cotton has its own physical and chemical properties which are required to know for better processing in spinning, weaving, knitting, dyeing, printing as well as finishing. Here, I have written about physical and chemical properties of cotton fiber.

Physical Properties of Cotton: Physical properties of cotton fibers are given below:

1. Color: The color of cotton fiber could be white, creamy white, bluish white, yellowish white or grey.


2. Tensile Strength: Cotton is moderately strong fiber. It has a tenacity of 3-5 gm/den. The strength is greatly affected by moisture; the wet strength of cotton is 20%, which is higher than dry strength.


3. Elongation at break: Cotton does not stress easily. It has an elongation at break of 5-10%.


4. Elastic Recovery: Cotton is inelastic and rigid fiber. At 2% extension it has an ER of 74% and at 5% extension it has an ER of 45%.


5. Specific Gravity: Specific gravity is 1.54.


6. Moisture Regain (MR %): Standard moisture regain is 8.5.


7. Effect of Heat: Cotton has an excellent resistance to degradation by heat. It begins to turn yellow after several hours at 120⁰C and decomposes marked by at 150⁰C. As a result of oxidation, cotton is severally damaged after few minutes at 240⁰C. Cotton burns in air.


8. Effect of Sun Light: There is a gradual loss of strength when cotton is exposed to sun light and the fiber turn yellow. The degradation of cotton by oxidation is done when heat is promoted and encouraged. By sun light much of the damage is caused by UV-light and by the shorten weaves of visible light.


9. Effect of Age: Cotton shows a small loss of strength when stored carefully. After 50 years of storage cotton may differ only slightly from the new fibers.

Chemical Properties of Cotton: Cotton is a natural cellulosic fiber and it has some chemical properties. Chemical properties of the cotton fiber are given below:

1. Effect of Acids: Cotton is attacked by hot dilute acids or cold concentrated acids which it disintegrates. It is not affected by acids.


2. Effects of Alkalis: Cotton has an excellent resistance to alkalis. It swells in caustic alkalis ( NaOH) but it does not damaged. It can be washed repeatedly in soap solution without any problem.


3. Effect of Organic Solvent: Cotton has high resistance to normal cleaning solvents. Cotton is dissolved by the copper complexes, such as cuprammonium hydroxide, cupriethylene diamine and concentrated 70% H₂SO₄.


4. Effects of Insects: Cotton is not attacked by moth-grubs or beetles.


5. Effect of Micro Organism: Cotton is attacked by fungi and bacteria. Mildews will feed on cotton fabric, rotting and weakling the materials. Mildews and bacteria will flourish on cotton under hot and humid condition. They can be protected by impregnation with certain types of chemicals. Copper Nepthenate is one of the chemical.

I think above physical and chemical properties will help us to be careful about the processing of cotton in the different stages of processing from spinning to garments making.

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