Down is an animal protein fiber and the best natural material for warmth retention. Its products are deeply loved by consumers because of their softness, fluffiness and superior thermal performance. The penetration rate of down products in many developed countries has reached 100%.
Are the feathers all white?
Down can be divided into white down and different-color down according to the color. White down refers to the white down feathers in the stuffing, which generally come from the breast and abdomen of geese or ducks. White fleece is characterized by longer down feathers, good elasticity, and high thermal performance. Moreover, the color of the white velvet is lighter, so it is not easy to affect the appearance of the down jacket. The white fleece can also be processed to remove impurities and grease to improve the purity and thermal performance of the filling.
“Different color velvet”, in layman’s terms, is black and gray velvet. It is impossible for ducks and geese to be all white velvet. To obtain complete white velvet, only through manual selection. Since many down products choose light and light-colored fabrics, the different-colored down will be seen through the fabrics, and many consumers will think it is a quality problem.
It is difficult for natural things to be perfect. Different-colored velvet is not an impurity or dirt, and has no effect on quality and use. The national standard stipulates that the content of different-colored velvet is within 1%. However, there are still some consumers who pay more attention to the aesthetics of down, and cannot bear a little bit of flaws in down. In the past, down products companies adopted manual sorting. Workers carefully sorted and could complete about 5 kilograms of picking a day, which was inefficient and required a lot of labor, and the working environment for workers was extremely poor. Now, there is such an automatic sorting equipment, which can solve the problems that have troubled you for many years, and make the down you produce more popular.The realization principle of automatic sorting starts from two aspects, one is the automatic identification of different-color velvet, and the other is the automatic sorting of different-color velvet. Firstly, the equipment adopts the method of computer image processing to identify the different-color cashmere in the raw material cashmere, and sends a corresponding identification signal, and the automatic identification of the different-color cashmere is completed. Then use the position control technology and the vacuum effect of the jet pump to extract the different-color velvet from the raw materials. In addition, in order to ensure the continuous operation of the whole machine system, the coordination work of mechanical transmission, automatic feeding and receiving, flattening, equalizing, closing and other devices is also required.
Different-color down is down other than white down. There is no 100% pure white down in nature. If you want to achieve 100% pure white down, you can only do it artificially. Picking, the cost is very high.
Why bleach?
Compared with white velvet, due to the limited use of gray, black, and yellowish velvet, the price is low. In order to increase its economic value and sell it at a good price, “bleached velvet” came into being.
Common velvet bleaching uses oxidant treatment and reducing agent treatment. Oxidative bleaching mainly uses H2O2 as the oxidant. The bleaching process requires a higher pH value, a higher water bath temperature and a longer oxidation time. This method is difficult to control, prone to over-oxidation or incomplete oxidation, resulting in brittle down, easy yellowing and serious color change after bleaching. The oxidized down is strongly acidic, and the use of this kind of down by consumers will cause certain harm to the body. The reducing agent mainly plays a role in chemical setting of down and down, rather than decolorization and bleaching.
Down that has been bleached with chemicals feels hard, brittle, and has low bulkiness. The down content will drop significantly in the next year, and the quality will be greatly reduced. Strongly acidic sewage after bleaching contains a large amount of metal ions, even if it is discharged after treatment, it will pollute the environment.
It is difficult for natural things to be perfect. Different-color velvet is not an impurity or dirt, and has no effect on the quality. The national standard stipulates that the content of different-color velvet should be within 1%. Consumers love down because it is a natural protein fiber, which is light and has excellent thermal performance. However, some consumers pay more attention to the aesthetics of down and cannot bear a little bit of flaws in different-color down, which is a bit of a waste. Blindly pursuing pure white down, you may end up using “bleached down”!
Post time: May-17-2023