At 08:46 AM 6/4/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Gail wrote:
>
><< 5-6 pounds of fiber to 10 gal of soft, hot (140 degrees) of water,
>soak 1 hr. >>
>
>Can you keep the water that hot throughout the soak? If it's cooling
>down at all, you may have grease redepositing on the fiber.
But there's some kind of detergent in there, right? Detergent is an
amphiphilic molecule, it has a hydrophobic tail and hydrophilic head. The
way it works (er, the way I thought it works) is to heat the fat until it
melts, bind the fat of the sheep grease with the tail, the head keeps it in
the water, so as you rinse it out, the fat goes away instead of
redepositing.
'Course, I haven't tested this theory out... But I sort of suspect that's
how one part of the cold-water Fleece Magic is supposed to work. My other
theory on cold water washing is that there's some kind of lipase that is
that FM stuff that enzymatically degrades the lanolin to short chain fatty
acids, but that's purely speculation on my part. (I'm working on a Ph.D.
in phospholipids and membrane metabolism.)
Digressing,
-j.
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