How to test scoured cotton material:

As we understand cotton is scoured using alkali at boiling temperature. During or after scouring, it is must to know whether the material scoured properly or not. To ascetain that a simple drop test can be performed. In such type of test, if the material is under scouring process, a small piece of fabric is cut from the lot of fabric which is running in the machine say jigger (after stoping it). The piece is washed properly under tap water (Soft water) and dried using iron or placing the fabric piece on hot steam pipe line. After cooling the fabric, a drop of water is allowed to fall on this piece of fabric. If the drop is absorb whithin few seconds say 3 seconds, one can be assured that scouring is perfectly done. However, if the drop is taking much time to absorb, there is a need to continue the scouring process untill the fabric acquire optimum absorbency. If the fabric is being scoured for printing process, it is required that the water drop should be absorbed within 1 second. There are standard tests are also availabe for testing absorbency of fabric in the laboratory e.g IS 2349 and AATCC 79.