A study of adsorption of water vapour on wool under static and dynamic conditions

Abstract

Adsorption of water vapour on wool provides not only textile comfort, but also convenience in transportation due to increase in its bulk density. The adsorption and desorption isotherms of water vapour for wool were determined by both volumetric technique using a Coulter Omnisorp 100CX instrument and gravimetric method employing a Cahn 2000 electronic microbalance. Adsorption isotherm fitting to B.E.T. model and hysteresis on desorption was observed. The average effective diffusion coefficient of water in wool was found to be 8.4 × 10-14 m2 s-1 at 25°C from gravimetric data. The effects of packing height and air velocity on the breakthrough curves were also investigated in the wool packed columns. For pseudo first order model, k values changing between 0.33 × 10-6 -69 × 10-6 s-1 was obtained for 2.2-6.4 cm s-1 air velocity and 0.05-0.20 m packing height ranges.