The Wool Handbook: Morphology, Structure, Property and Applications explores the fundamental aspects of wool fibers as well as traditional and novel applications of wool in areas including polymer composites and technical textiles. Apart from textiles and garments, wool has long been used for various diversified applications due to its unique material properties. Wool is inherently fire resistant, antimicrobial, flexible and antibacterial, and as a natural material, it can be used to create environmentally sustainable products. This book explains basic and advanced topics related to wool fibers, from shearing to marketing, drawing on academic and industrial research from a range of subjects.
Providing statistics, processing methods, and testing and characterization techniques for wool fiber, this book will help readers to use wool fibers to find new applications and solutions.
- Provides advanced testing methods to explore the material characteristics of wool
- Includes the latest industrial methods for physical and chemical processing of wool
- Presents case studies on how wool fibers have been made into successful bio-based composite and textile products
Seiko Jose PhD is a scientist, working at ICAR-Central Sheep and Wool Research Institute, Avikanagar, Rajasthan, India. He has over 17 years’ experience in textiles including time spent in industry and academia. His industrial experience is focused on wet processing of cotton, silk, and linen processing units. For the last 8 eight years of his research career, he has worked with a range of natural fibres such as, wool, jute, pineapple leaf fibre, coir, flax, and ramie. He has contributed to 30 research papers and 9 book chapters. His major research areas are extraction and characterization of natural fibre, textile dyeing and finishing, eco-friendly textile processing, natural fibre composites, and natural dyes.
Dr. Sabu Thomas (Ph.D.) is the Director of the School of Energy Materials, School of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology of Mahatma Gandhi University, India. He received his Ph. D. in 1987 in Polymer Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, India. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, London, and a member of the American Chemical Society. He has been ranked no.1 in India about the number of publications (most productive scientists). Prof. Thomas’s research group specialized areas of polymers which includes Polymer blends, Fiber filled polymer composites, Particulate-filled polymer composites and their morphological characterization, Ageing and degradation, Pervaporation phenomena, sorption and diffusion, Interpenetrating polymer systems, Recyclability and reuse of waste plastics and rubbers, Elastomer cross-linking, Dual porous nanocomposite scaffolds for tissue engineering, etc. Prof. Thomas’s research group has extensive exchange programs with different industries, research, and academic institutions all over the world and is performing world-class collaborative research in various fields. Professors Centre is equipped with various sophisticated instruments and has established state-of-the-art experimental facilities which cater to the needs of researchers within the country and abroad. His H Index- 133, Google Citations- 86424, Number of Publications- 1300, and Books-160.
Dr Gautam Basu is the former Principal Scientist & Head of the Mechanical Processing Division, ICAR-National Institute of Natural Fibre Engineering and Technology, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He completed his Masters degree in Textile Technology and his Ph. D. in Polymer Science & Technology from the University of Calcutta. He is a fellow of Institution of Engineers (India). He has published nearly 100 papers, including research, review, training manual, lecture notes, seminar proceedings, in addition to six books and thirteen book chapters. Four patents have been awarded to him and two others are under process. His 40 years of work experience includes 9 years in Industry and 31 years in research institutes. His major areas of work are, investigation of structure and property of natural fibres and their value addition, improvement in process performance of natural fibres through various pre-treatments, technical textiles including geotextiles, and development of machinery & testing instruments. He was a member of various recommending bodies (on natural fibres) formed by Government agencies. He was involved in 28 research projects including as Principal Investigator of the World Bank, and Govt. of India funded projects. He is having more than 950 Google citations with H index of 16.