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bleaching

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bleaching

Decolorization of coloured materials. The two main types of bleaching agent are oxidizing bleaches, which bring about the oxidation of pigments and include the ultraviolet rays in sunshine, hydrogen peroxide, and chlorine in household bleaches; and reducing bleaches, which bring about reduction and include sulphur dioxide.

Bleach is used in industry to lighten or whiten fabrics, yarns, or fibres. Bleaching processes have been known from antiquity, mainly those acting through sunlight. Both natural and synthetic pigments usually possess highly complex molecules, the colour property often being due to only a part of the molecule. Bleaches usually attack only that small part, yielding another substance similar in chemical structure but colourless.

In the fabric industry, hydrogen peroxide is usually used to whiten cotton, which in its natural state is a yellowish-white. Chlorine dioxide is used to bleach polyester, acrylic, and blends of synthetic fibres. Sodium hydrosulphite is used to bleach wool. Specialist bleaches can be added to washing detergents to improve stain removal and brighten fabrics. Optical bleach, which is added to many detergents, is not really bleach, but fluorescent dye which coats fabric, making it brighter; the dye also makes the fabric glow under ultraviolet light.



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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
Upon the stranger's shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and some few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you now saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled, half-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.
Moby Dick LXVIII-CXXXIV by Melville, Herman View in context
It happened, while we lay in the bleaching grounds, that one half of the piece extended into a part of the field that came under the management of a legitimist, while the other invaded the dominions of a liberal.
Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief by Cooper, James Fenimore View in context
As far as the eye could reach to the eastward, extended a long line of whitened bones; pieces of skeletons surrounded the fountain; a caravan had evidently made its way to that point, marking its progress by its bleaching remains; the weaker had fallen one by one upon the sand; the stronger, having at length reached this spring for which they panted, had there found a horrible death.
Five Weeks in a Balloon by Verne, Jules View in context
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