Hydrophobic and/or oil-resistant properties in flame retardant fabrics

What are them, and what does it mean each?
Inside textile world, the terms hydrophobic and oil-resistant are used in a lot and varied textile products to use in working scopes in addition to particular ones. Both are referred to the fabric's reactions before the contact with liquids, but with different aims.

The term Hydrophobic is applied to that substance or material that is repelled by water or couldn't mix with it. An example of a hydrophobic substance is oil. Hydrophobic materials warrant a higher product's durability as well as a better maintenance since they don't accumulate humidity. This property is essential when task that imply a direct contact with water are done, like plumbing or industrial machinery.

The word Oil-resistant, on the other hand, is used to refer to an oil repellant cover that avoids that oil is absorbed in the treated surface. Water is the most common oil-resistant substance, although this property could be given to other materials through plasma treatments like the ones developed in industrial sector. The most useful aspect of oil-resistant covers is that they could make the materials resistant to fingerprints because they repelled the oils produced by skin.

In Texfire we are specialized in manufacture technical fabrics and in several of our collections we could find products manufactured with this kind of fabrics. You could find in the range of products for welding protection different types of blankets for the protection against sparks and heat tailored with Weld SX and Weld S2 fabrics, that bring a flame resistance, oil-resistant and hydrophobic. We could also find it in the range of bed linen, the flame retardant mattress protector Texfire that meets also with both features.

Both properties have an important role to ensure the proper functioning of a fabric that requires a protection against water penetration or oil, and vice-versa.

All the technical fabrics used to create Texfire products could also be acquired by meters in our online shop.