Extra Flame Resistance For Wool Military Uniforms
It’s a time-honored tradition: families sending socks, mufflers, gloves, caps and other woolen wear to their loved ones serving in the military, to help keep them warm and comfortable.
Now the Agricultural Research Service is joining those ranks, with a new treatment for wool uniforms that can help keep our troops safe. In fact, ARS is looking for a business partner to license the agency’s new treatment, which can be applied to wool and wool-rich blends to make them much more flame-resistant.
That extra flame resistance is of particular interest to the Department of Defense, which is looking for ways to produce uniforms that are comfortable, washable and, most important of all, won’t melt and form hard beads that can drip into open wounds, exacerbating injuries in the way that polyester fabrics can. Wool already has some flame retardancy, but the Defense Department would like to improve upon that for their uniforms.
Yes, there are already technologies available to
add heat resistance to fabrics, including wool, but those techniques
use metals and other chemicals that are considered environmentally
unfriendly.
By contrast, the ARS-developed technology was designed to be applied as a finish to ARS- developed enzyme-polished, machine-washable wool. The compound can be applied to yarn, fabric and even finished garments.
ARS has been helping the military in an amazing array of ways for many decades. For example, an ARS scientist developed a way to produce a biodiesel fuel that contains soybean oil and can be safely blended with noncommercial jet fuel called JP-8 that’s used in military aircraft.
In laboratory studies, the ARS scientist added small amounts of a substance called SME — derived from fatty acids of soybean oil — to JP-8. The same scientist developed a three-step winterization process for biodiesel fuel that involved mixing in additives, chilling the fuel and filtering out solids. The results were very promising: In lab tests, winterized SME didn’t form solid particles when exposed to a range of temperatures of slightly below zero to 52 degrees below zero.
In previous tests, the scientists had produced biodiesel fuels capable of starting diesel engines at temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit, making them comparable to petroleum-based diesel fuels. Using biodiesel blends that hadn’t been winterized could limit military aircraft’s ability to fly at high altitudes, when cold temperatures can cause crystal formation, blocking fuel filters and clogging fuel lines.
ARS has a long tradition of protecting our armed forces against another type of enemy: insect pests. For example, during the World War II era, General George C. Marshall created the first formal collaboration between USDA and the Department of Defense. One of the end products of that collaboration was the discovery that DDT could prevent louse-borne typhus.
You’ve probably heard of DEET, an ARS product from the 1950s — and still among the most widely used mosquito repellents. More recently, ARS developed a new repellent known as “SS220,” based on a compound called a stereoisomer that was first produced by ARS scientists in 1978. ARS field tests have shown that a mixture of just 20 percent SS220 works just as well as 30 percent DEET in protecting our troops against the major species of disease-carrying mosquitos.
Getting back to those new wool uniforms: ARS could make it possible for our troops to not only be safer, but much more comfortable. That’s because the same scientist who developed the flame-retardant treatment also came up with a way to “bio-polish” wool. This means the wool is pre-treated with a stable, activated peroxide, followed by treatment with enzymes.
Just as various members of a military unit have specialized skills, each step of this process performs a specific task. A hydrogen peroxide treatment bleaches the wool at lower temperatures and in half the time of conventional techniques, and also makes it easier to dye the wool. Then an enzyme treatment “shrink-proofs” the wool.
Wool shrinkage from washing occurs when the heat and pressure lock wool’s tiny surface scales in place. But the enzyme treatment changes the wool’s surface by breaking down its proteins, so those little scales can’t get tangled up. The result is a wool garment that feels silky smooth.
As anyone who’s ever been in the military knows: There are many ways to serve!
"Everybody's
Science" is written by Sandy Miller Hays, Director of Information for
the Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hays is a native of Fort Smith,
Ark. From the late 1970s until early 1988, Hays was a reporter, editor
and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat (now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette),
a Little Rock-based daily newspaper. She joined the ARS Information
Staff in 1988, and became Director of Information in April 1998.
It’s a time-honored tradition: families sending socks, mufflers, gloves, caps and other woolen wear to their loved ones serving in the military, to help keep them warm and comfortable.
Now the Agricultural Research Service is joining those ranks, with a new treatment for wool uniforms that can help keep our troops safe. In fact, ARS is looking for a business partner to license the agency’s new treatment, which can be applied to wool and wool-rich blends to make them much more flame-resistant.
That extra flame resistance is of particular interest to the Department of Defense, which is looking for ways to produce uniforms that are comfortable, washable and, most important of all, won’t melt and form hard beads that can drip into open wounds, exacerbating injuries in the way that polyester fabrics can. Wool already has some flame retardancy, but the Defense Department would like to improve upon that for their uniforms.
A
new biopolishing wool-processing technique may soon be used to make
wool clothing more comfortable. Even the U.S. military is interested. (Photo by Peggy Greb)
By contrast, the ARS-developed technology was designed to be applied as a finish to ARS- developed enzyme-polished, machine-washable wool. The compound can be applied to yarn, fabric and even finished garments.
ARS has been helping the military in an amazing array of ways for many decades. For example, an ARS scientist developed a way to produce a biodiesel fuel that contains soybean oil and can be safely blended with noncommercial jet fuel called JP-8 that’s used in military aircraft.
In laboratory studies, the ARS scientist added small amounts of a substance called SME — derived from fatty acids of soybean oil — to JP-8. The same scientist developed a three-step winterization process for biodiesel fuel that involved mixing in additives, chilling the fuel and filtering out solids. The results were very promising: In lab tests, winterized SME didn’t form solid particles when exposed to a range of temperatures of slightly below zero to 52 degrees below zero.
In previous tests, the scientists had produced biodiesel fuels capable of starting diesel engines at temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit, making them comparable to petroleum-based diesel fuels. Using biodiesel blends that hadn’t been winterized could limit military aircraft’s ability to fly at high altitudes, when cold temperatures can cause crystal formation, blocking fuel filters and clogging fuel lines.
ARS has a long tradition of protecting our armed forces against another type of enemy: insect pests. For example, during the World War II era, General George C. Marshall created the first formal collaboration between USDA and the Department of Defense. One of the end products of that collaboration was the discovery that DDT could prevent louse-borne typhus.
You’ve probably heard of DEET, an ARS product from the 1950s — and still among the most widely used mosquito repellents. More recently, ARS developed a new repellent known as “SS220,” based on a compound called a stereoisomer that was first produced by ARS scientists in 1978. ARS field tests have shown that a mixture of just 20 percent SS220 works just as well as 30 percent DEET in protecting our troops against the major species of disease-carrying mosquitos.
Getting back to those new wool uniforms: ARS could make it possible for our troops to not only be safer, but much more comfortable. That’s because the same scientist who developed the flame-retardant treatment also came up with a way to “bio-polish” wool. This means the wool is pre-treated with a stable, activated peroxide, followed by treatment with enzymes.
Just as various members of a military unit have specialized skills, each step of this process performs a specific task. A hydrogen peroxide treatment bleaches the wool at lower temperatures and in half the time of conventional techniques, and also makes it easier to dye the wool. Then an enzyme treatment “shrink-proofs” the wool.
Wool shrinkage from washing occurs when the heat and pressure lock wool’s tiny surface scales in place. But the enzyme treatment changes the wool’s surface by breaking down its proteins, so those little scales can’t get tangled up. The result is a wool garment that feels silky smooth.
As anyone who’s ever been in the military knows: There are many ways to serve!
The Agricultural Research Service is the chief in-house scientific
research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You can read
more about ARS discoveries at http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/.
About the author
"Everybody's
Science" is written by Sandy Miller Hays, Director of Information for
the Agricultural Research Service, the chief scientific research agency
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hays is a native of Fort Smith,
Ark. From the late 1970s until early 1988, Hays was a reporter, editor
and columnist at the Arkansas Democrat (now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette),
a Little Rock-based daily newspaper. She joined the ARS Information
Staff in 1988, and became Director of Information in April 1998.