Use of essential oils as bioactive substances for antimicrobial finishing of fabrics.

Antimicrobial compounds (essential oils) have been extracted from natural spices, such as oregano and cinnamon, using organic solvent (ethylene) by soxhlet apparatus. The above bioactive agents (5% & 10 % owfseparately for both agents) are applied separately on plain cotton and polyester/cotton woven fabrics using pad-dry-cure process. For fixation of the finishing agents, glutaraldehyde (8% owf) has been used as a cross-linking agent along with sodium hypophosphite (2% owf) as the catalyst. Evaluation of the antimicrobial activity of untreated and treated fabrics has been performed quantitatively by percentage reduction test against test organisms Gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureusand Gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli. The results indicate that treated fabrics register >90% antimicrobial activity against S. aureusand E. colibacterial strains. After 10 washes, the efficacy of antimicrobial activity is reduced by 10-20% only. A small decrease in flexibility, breaking strength and elongation properties is observed for treated fabrics. However, treated fabrics show enhanced crease recovery.