Titled competitiveness and sustainability in times of crisis, the Spanish Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AEQCT), member of the international federation of the same sector, will hold on March 24th and 25th, its XXXVI Symposium.

The headquarters of the Col • legi d'Enginyers Tècnics Industrials de Barcelona will host this year where experts and professionals in all areas of textile share information and discuss different topics related to the sector. Finishes, nanotechnology, colorimetry, spinning, technical textiles, fiber producers, how to live with the crisis, business opportunities, financing lines or the production of technology centers in this area ... will be among the issues to be addressed during the symposium.

Also during the event will also be granted as well the AEQCT XXIII Award for the best study of textile or textile chemical industry application.

The Technological Center Leitat will be present at this meeting with the paper “Application opportunities of plasma technology and sol-gel in the textile industry”. Llorenç Bautista and J.Mota will be responsible to publicize various studies based on the application of plasma and sol-gel technologies in the textile industry and a combination of both. In fact, what is intended with these technologies is to improve some properties such as taintability, shrinking the washing, anti-pilling, ultrahydrophobia and oleophobic properties, UV absorption, bactericidal and bacteriostatic character, easy-care, fire-retardant properties and flame retardants, antistatic character over multiple types of tissue.

In this sense, Leitat has studied woven, knitted and nonwoven fabrics, using different compositions from natural plant fibers and animal fibers and mixtures of these. Likewise, it has also studied the effect of washing and most properties have been determined what type of washing favors permanent finishing, specifying the kinds of detergents and washing conditions.