Textiles can be coated with the biopolymer chitosan and thus made water-repellent by binding hydrophobic molecules. The good thing is that this can also replace toxic and petroleum-based substances that are currently used for textile finishing. In the last few years the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB and partners in the HydroFichi project have researched how this can be done: A technology has been developed to provide fibers with the desired properties using biotechnological processes and chitosan.
