All fabrics from natural to synthetic fiber, they need a hand to promote its comfortable feeling, Soft, Smooth, Fluffy, Elastic, Bulk, Gloss,Full.. Therefore, fabric softening treatment has become an important part in textile processing.

1. What is silicone softener

—-Upscale Softness Finishing Solution

All fabrics from natural to synthetic fiber, they need a hand to promote its comfortable feeling, Soft, Smooth, Fluffy, Elastic, Bulk, Gloss,Full.. Therefore, fabric softening treatment has become an important part in textile processing.

Once produced, fibers can be treated with silicones to impart initial softness to the textiles made from these fibers. Softening is considered to come from the siloxane backbone flexibility and the freedom of rotation along the Si-O bonds. This allows exposure of the low interacting methyl groups, reducing fiber-to-fiber interactions. To enhance durability through multiple wash cycles, some methyl groups can be replaced on the silicone polymer by other functional groups to increase the silicone softener attraction to, and interaction with, the fibers to be treated.

In this respect, amino-functional groups like -CH2-CH2-CH2-NH-CH2-CH2-NH2 are particularly popular for increasing physical adsorption and providing better softening properties.

2. Features of silicone softener

• Excellent hand feeling including collection and preference of softness, smoothness, fullness, elasticity……

• Spectacular hydrophilicity for various fabrics including cotton,flax, viscose, polyester, polyamide and any other you are using

• Very good stability under hard process condition and compatibility, no stick to roll, no float oil……

• No yellowing problem, not change color and impact whiteness

• Absolute high cost-performance and good properties by using less usage to achieve same and better effect

• ..

3. Questions about silicone softener

3.1.  How to measure hand feeling and other properties? Hand feeling can be data-oriental simply?

Hand feeling can not be measured by device simply, some index of the data can roughly show its hand feeling, like solid content, etc. However, final hand feeling is evaluated by experienced expert through a series of touch and feeling. Therefore, it’s a sensory evaluation.

3.2. Which factors will lead to non-ideal results?

Firstly, different softeners have matched emulsification system and emulsifier to optimize effect, therefore, please do test according to the instruction of the providers.

Secondly, the quality of emulsifier will affect the emulsion effect, therefore, please strictly source high quality emulsifier.

Thirdly, finishing treatment is a step in textile processing, before and after finishing process, the fabrics have been handled by many procedures, there are tens of thousands of chemical molecule into fabrics. It’s quite possible to have chemical reaction rejection reaction with softeners. Therefore, it causes softeners could not exert effect. For some kinds of silicone softeners, they have limited compatibility with anionic textile auxiliaries, so compatibility tests should be carried out before it is used together with other chemicals.

Please read the relevant operating procedures before testing.

Silicone Resin is some kind of...

Silicone Resin is some kind of thermosetting materials, with excellent thermal oxidation stability and excellent electrical insulation properties, in addition, it also has excellent properties of waterproof, moisture-proof, anti-rust, cold resistance, ozone resistance, weather resistance and corrosion resistance to most of aqueous chemical reagents. The proportion of silicone resin in the entire organosilicone materials is very small, the consumption volume of silicone resin in USA, Western Europe and Japan is bout 35,000 Metric tons/year, only 5% of total consumption volume of siloxane.

The silicone resin industry in China is developing slowly, the total output is small, only accounts for 3% of the total output of organosilicon products in China. Silicone Resin industry is the most lagging industry of the whole downstream of silicone industry in China. There is only about 30 manufacturers of silicone resins in China at present, most of them are small factories. Currently, the annual consumption volume of silicone resin in China is about 10,000 Metric tons, only 1/3 is produced by the local factories. 

Methyl silicone resin and Methyl phenyl silicone resin are the main products manufactured by Chinese plants, they are mainly used in the electrical and electronic components for moisture-resistant insulation, formulating high temperature and weather resistant coatings, scratch resistant coatings for plexiglass and metal surface, waterproofing coatings, etc. 

With the development of methyl monomer in China, there will be surplus Methyl trichlorosilane at a large amount in the future , what's more, in the next few years, there will be a  great development of phenyl monomer in China, which will greatly promote the production and application of silicone resin in China.

The list of the current main suppliers of silicone resins in China: 

In recent years, the productivity of fumed silica in China has increased by leaps and bounds. In 2000, the production capacity was only 1100 tons/year, reaching 40,000 tons/year in 2009, and increasing to 86,400/year in 2012. In 2013 Chinese fumed silica production capacity increased to 104,900...

Fume Silica(CAS Number: 112945-52-5) is widely used in silicone rubber, tire, cable compounds and unsaturated polyester resin, adhesives, paint, ink and copier toner, food, cosmetics, playing a role of reinforcing, thickening, anti caking, rheology and thixotropy control, etc.

In recent years, the productivity of fumed silica in China has increased by leaps and bounds. In 2000, the production capacity was only 1100 tons/year, reaching 40,000 tons/year in 2009, and increasing to 86,400 tons/year in 2012. In 2013 Chinese fumed silica production capacity increased to 104,900 tons/year, in 2014, the total production capacity of fumed silica in China was 110, 400 tons/year, accounting for 29.5% of the total global production capacity. However, the proportion of the production capacity of the Chinese local enterprises is not high, the market is almost controlled by several large international companies, such as Cabot, Wacker, Degussa, Tokuyama, etc. In 2014, there was about 26 production enterprises of fumed silica in China, the total output was 58, 800 tons, while the part of the output of the 4 foreign joint ventures was 470,00 tons.

The import and export volume of fumed silica in China in 2014. 

The fumed silica produced in China had been exported to many countries in 2014, including Korea, USA, Japan, Indonesia, Iran., etc. The volume exported to Korea, USA, Japan accounted for 57.9% of the total volume be exported. 

The total consumption volume of fumed silica in China was 54, 400 tons in 2014, year-on-year growth rate was 11%, it is expected that the total production capacity of fumed silica in China will reach 98,000 tons, the total consumption volume will reach 88,000 tons. The average growth rate of the consumption volume is expected to be 10.3% during 2014~2019. 

Although the fumed silica industry in China has developed rapidly in recent years, there are still some problems to be solved: 

1. The industry concentration is low, the local manufacturers are numerous, but the average production capacity is small, there is still a big gap compared with those world famous manufacturers. 

2. The product structure is unreasonable, most of the products are middle or low grade, the proportion of the hydrophobic silica and fumed silica with high specific surface is still limited. 

3. The production technology of fumed silica in China is still relatively outdated. 

There are about 200 manufacturing enterprises engaged in the production of silicone oils and their further processing products in China, besides, there are many new plants joining in this industry each year.

There are a great variety of silicone Oils and their further processing products. Silicone oils mainly include dimethyl silicone oil, polyether modified silicone oil, amino silicone oil, methyl hydrogen silicone oil, vinyl silicone oil, hydroxyl silicone oil and phenyl silicone oil., etc. The further processing products of silicone oils mainly include silicone grease and emulsion, silicone antifoam, silicone release agent and silicone elastomer etc. 

The consumption volume for dimethyl silicone oil is the largest, it is widely used in the silicone rubber processing, antifoam, textile finishing agent, leather chemicals, cosmetics, release agent., etc. 

Polyether modified silicone oil is widely used as foam Stabilizer and leveling agent, amino silicone oils is mainly used as textile finishing agent and leather auxiliaries, phenyl silicone oil is mainly used as the basic oil for high and low temperature lubriciating greases.

Methyl Hydrogen Silicone Oil in China are largely exported in recent years, it is widely used as gypsum board water repellent, raw materials for modified silicone oil, crosslinking agent and anti-yellowing agent for silicone rubber. 

The current status of the silicone oils production in China:

    1. There are about 200 manufacturing enterprises engaged in the production of silicone oils and their further processing products in China, besides, there are many new plants joining in this industry each year, but most of them have small size and small fixed investment, few variety of products. 

    2. Domestic manufacturing enterprises are concentrated in the middle and low-end products, such as dimethyl silicone oil, methyl hydrogen silicone oil, vinyl silicone oil, etc, competition between enterprises mainly focus on price competition. High-end silicone oil such as polyether modified silicone oil and other modified silicone oil have to depend on importation. The main reason is that the quality of dimethyl monomer is difficult to meet the requirements and the type of special monomers in China is relatively small, although the current breakthrough, there is still far from the mass production;

    3. Some of the products made by part of the enterprises in China  have already  reached the international advanced level, but generally, the  problem of the low R & D investment and unstable quality of the products still needs to be solved. 

Manufacturer Annual Production...

Silane coupling agent is a kind of modified materials which has excellent high temperature resistance and weather resistance, excellent electrical and surface properties and it is physiologically inert.

Silane coupling agent is a kind of modified materials which has excellent high temperature resistance and weather resistance, excellent electrical and surface properties and it is physiologically inert, it is widely used in military, construction,chemical, textile, electronics, electricity, machinery, composite materials, cultural relics protection and biological engineering industries., etc. 

As a kind of irreplaceable basic materials, silane coupling agent mainly appear as trifunctional and bifunctional alkoxysilane, including methoxysilane and ethoxysilane. The golobal market demand is showing a rapid growth trend. 120,000 tons in the year of 2008 while 40,000tons in China and 200,000 tons in the year of 2012 while 90,000 tons in China. 

At present, the traditional production method of silane coupling agent is based on HSiCl3 as the raw material, that is, begin from the HSiCl3, but this method has a problem of high resource consumption, environmental pollution (large amount of hydrogen chloride emissions), long producton process and the high cost of production. Therefore, the world's research and production orgnizations are all taking the direct synthesis of alkoxysilane from silicon/alcohol as the latest and best development direction for the production of silane coupling agent, it has the advantages of a short production process, low consumption, substantial energy saving and emission reduction. Hubei WD Silicone Co., Ltd. had developed a direct synthesis method of the production of trimethoxysilane with silicon powder and methanol as raw materials and further production of silane coupling agent.