Understanding Viscose Fabric
Since the late 1800s, viscose fabric has been a staple of many closets and houses. Viscose is a flexible fabric that is inexpensive to make and is used for upholstery and carpeting in homes, as well as clothing items like blouses, dresses, and jackets. It is soft and lightweight. Viscose comes from trees, but because of the high chemical concentrations used during production, it is not as environmentally friendly as other varieties of rayon, such as modal.
How Is Viscose Made?
Bamboo can also make viscose, often manufactured from the wood pulp of trees, including beech, pine, and eucalyptus. Due to the several chemicals used in the viscose process, including sodium hydroxide and carbon disulfide, viscose is considered semi-synthetic.
Five steps make up the production process for viscose:
- To create a brown wood pulp solution, the plant is chopped into wood pulp and mixed with chemicals like sodium hydroxide.
- This brown wood pulp is cleansed, bleached, and dried.
- To produce the fibers, the pulp is first treated with carbon disulfide before being dissolved in sodium hydroxide to make the “viscose” solution.
- The viscose solution is pushed through a spinneret, a device that produces regenerated cellulose filaments.
- After being spun into yarn, this regenerated cellulose is used to weave or knit fabrics made of viscose rayon.