Treatment of paper and textile fabrics with emulsified epoxy-silicones

Claim 1

In the method of imparting water repellency to paper and textile fabric substrates which comprises contacting the substrates with a water-dispersible aqueous emulsion of an epoxy-silicone having the formula: MD.sub.x U.sub.y M'.sub.q wherein D represents an R 2 SiO unit in which R is a monovalent hydrocarbon radical free of acetylenic unsaturation; U represents a unit selected from the class consisting of ##STR10## in which R is as defined above and R' a monovalent organic radical containing at least one vicinal epoxy group, ##STR11## M and M' are in each occurrence an endblocking unit having the formula ##STR12## in which R" is a monovalent hydrocarbon radical free of olefinic unsaturation, R' is as defined above, a has a value from 0 to 1 inclusive, q has a value of 1 when U is an ##STR13## unit and a value of (y + 1) when U is an R'SiO 3/2 unit, x is an integer having a value of from 10 to about 10 5 , y is an integer having a value of from 1 to about 10 2 , the sum of x, y and q being such that the epoxy-silicone compound MD x U y M' has a molecular weight of from about 10 3 to about 10 6 and the ratio of epoxy-containing units to units containing no epoxy groups is within the range of from about 0.001 to 0.5, said epoxy-silicone being employed in an amount of from about 0.01 to about 4 weight % based on the weight of dry substrate, the improvement which consists of producing an aqueous emulsion for application to said substrates by emulsifying said epoxy-silicone in water using about 1 to 25 weight %, based on the weight of said epoxy-silicone, of an anionic sulfonate emulsifier capable of producing an aqueous emulsion of said epoxy-silicone having a maximum water absorption on paper at 49° C. for 3 minutes of about 0.6 g./100 cm 2 when measured by the Cobb Test in accordance with TAPPI-T-441.