White or light-colored fabrics in the storage process often appear phenol yellowing phenomenon, in the sales process, once the fabric yellowing, its grade and sales price will be greatly discounted. The main cause of phenolic yellows in fabrics is packaging material polyethylene. In the production and processing of polyethylene, phenolic antioxidants containing steric hindrances are generally added, of which BHT (2, 6-di-tert-butyl-4-methylphenol) is widely used because of its cheap price.

In recent years, many fabric buyers have included the phenolic yellowing index of fabrics into the inspection contract, so more and more printing and dyeing factories have begun to pay attention to the factors affecting phenolic yellowing in the printing and dyeing process, among which the phenolic yellowing properties of softeners have attracted much attention. At present, it is generally believed that the structure of softener, ammonia value and cloth surface pH have a greater impact on phenol yellowing, while other influencing factors in silicone oil emulsion system, such as emulsifiers, solvents and other additives, have been less studied. Therefore, the researchers selected amino silicone oil crude oil with different ammonia values, used non-ionic emulsifier TO5 (the amount of 30 g/L), emulsified according to the oil emulsion ratio of 10∶5, and obtained four softeners with effective oil mass fraction of 14%, and compared phenol yellow with the same amount.

The results showed that the phenolic yellowing of softener was affected by many factors, and it could be improved from the following perspectives: (1) The softener with low ammonia value should be selected as far as possible, combining the hand feeling and phenolic yellowing; (2) Considering the emulsifier and emulsification ratio, select the appropriate emulsifier and emulsification ratio; (3) as little as possible to introduce additives (such as isopropyl alcohol, butyl ether, crosslinking agents, glycerin, sorbitol, diethanolamine, etc.); (4) Try to control the pH of the emulsion at 4~6; (5) A small amount of anti-phenol yellowing agent can be appropriately added to improve the yellowing effect of phenol.