Oxidation bleaches and

However, the most famous hair bleach is hydrogen peroxide. Unlike sunlight and lemon juice, peroxide is an oxidizing bleach, and its effects are less easily undone. 

Most of the features in the preceding two sections come back in the other areas of laundry care. Light-duty laundry products tend to have milder pH s than heavy duties and are invariably free of an oxidizing bleach and permit a higher degree of perfumer flexibility. Laundry liquids, in general, have a fatty acid or soap component and this can be a source of inherent base malodor. Booster products often involve a bleach component and this provides obvious limitations. 

The process operated by ACl is outlined in Figure 7. Bales of cotton linter are opened, cooked in dilute caustic soda, and bleached with sodium hypochlorite. The resulting highly purified ceUulose is mixed with pre-precipitated basic copper sulfate in the dissolver, and 24—28% ammonium hydroxide cooled to below 20°C is added. The mixture is agitated until dissolution is complete. If necessary, air is introduced to aUow oxidative depolymerization and hence a lowering of the dope viscosity. 

Water-Soluble Films. Water-soluble films can be produced from such polymers as poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVOH), methylceUulose, poly(ethylene oxide), or starch (qv) (see Cellulose ethers Polyethers Vinyl polymers). Water-soluble films are used for packaging and dispensing portions of detergents, bleaches, and dyes. A principal market is disposable laundry bags for hospital use. Disposal packaging for herbicides and insecticides is an emerging use. 

Table 6. Equivalent Weight and Efficiency of Oxidizing Bleaching Agents ...

There are two types of bleachiag oxidative and reductive. Oxidative bleaching cleaves carbon—carbon double bonds thus destroyiag chromophores. Reductive bleaching reduces carbon—carbon double bonds to single bonds. The loss of extended conjugation ia the chromophore leads to loss of color. 

Bleaching and decolorization can occur by destroying one or more of the double bonds in the conjugated chain, by cleaving the conjugated chain, or by oxidation of one of the other moieties in the conjugated chain. The result of any one of the three reactions is an increase in the energy gap between the... 

Further Preparative Reactions. When pulps are to be used in the production of materials that do not retain the original fiber stmcture, such as rayon or ceUulose acetate film, the lignin, hemiceUulose, and other components must be reduced to the lowest possible concentrations. A surfactant (ionic or nonionic) is often added during a hot, weakly alkaline extraction step after chlorination. Another approach, sometimes used in addition to the surfactant step, is to treat the pulp with 6—10% NaOH after most of the oxidative bleaching is finished. This treatment removes most of the hemiceUulose. In most purification plants the final stage includes use of sulfuric acid chelators are optional. 

Some hypochlorites, either as solutions or soflds, are much more stable than hypochlorous acid, and because of thek high oxidation potential and ready hydrolysis to the parent acid, find wide use in bleaching and sanitizing appHcations. One of the novel uses of hypochlorites was for disinfection of ApoUo Eleven on its return from the moon (136). 

Uses. /-Butyl hypochlorite has been found useful in upgrading vegetable oils (273) and in the preparation of a-substituted acryflc acid esters (274) and esters of isoprene halohydrins (275). Numerous patents describe its use in cross-linking of polymers (qv) (276), in surface treatment of mbber (qv) (277), and in odor control of polymer latexes (278). It is used in the preparation of propylene oxide (qv) in high yield with Httle or no by-products (269,279). Fluoroalkyl hypochlorites are useful as insecticides, initiators for polymerizations, and bleaching and chlorinating agents (280). 

Sodium chlorite has also been used for treatment and removal of toxic and odorous gases such as hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans. Chlorine dioxide from chlorite is also useful for microbial and slime control in paper mills and alkaline paper machine systems (164,165). The use of sodium chlorite in textile bleaching and stripping is well known. Cotton is not degraded by sodium chlorite because the oxidation reactions are specific for the hemiceUulose and lignin components of the fibers. 

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