Author: Martin Trinker
Textiles are everywhere in daily life, from T-shirts and jeans to wool sweaters, sportswear, medical fabrics, upholstery, and industrial materials. Yet most of us only notice “fibre protection” when something goes wrong such when a favourite knit starts pilling after a few wears. Actually, visible ageing is one of the strongest drivers of early replacement, and research looking at end-of-life clothing identifies pilling and colour fading among the most common failure modes in discarded garments.
Behind such everyday experiences sits a huge industrial reality, that affects us beyond fashion. Extending the usable life of textiles is one of the most direct ways to reduce waste, resource use, and emissions linked to clothing production. The question is “How do we protect fibres during real life, especially during repeated washing?”
This article explains, in an accessible way, why fibre protection is so important, how the industry’s solutions evolved, what pain points are most urgent today, and how acib’s “diffusion-controlled bio-finishing” using size-enlarged (“XXL”) enzymes aims to deliver clean textiles while protecting the fibre interior.
What does “fibre protection” actually mean?
A textile fibre is like a tiny engineered structure. The surface largely determines how a fabric feels, how it reflects light (appearance), how it interacts with water and dirt, and how it behaves under friction. But the interior of the fibre determines strength, tear resistance, and long-term durability.
Fibre protection is therefore about controlling what happens at the fibre surface so that the textile keeps its desirable properties for longer, without weakening the structure that holds the fabric together. That goal sounds simple, but it becomes challenging because real textiles face repeated stress from:
Mechanical friction (wear, abrasion, backpacks, seatbelts, rubbing during washing), surface fuzz formation (which can become pilling), chemical exposure (detergents, sweat, bleaching agents), temperature changes, and repeated wetting and drying.
When surface damage accumulates, a garment can “fail” long before it is physically torn: it looks old, feels rough, loses its original handle, pills, or shrinks. Studies looking at real end-of-life clothing show that appearance-related failures such as pilling and colour change are among the most common reasons garments are discarded.
A short history of textile surface protection and finishing: from harsh chemistry to biology
Textile finishing has always been a balancing act: making fibres behave better in real life while avoiding unwanted side effects. Over time, solutions shifted in response to performance needs, cost, and regulation.
Early and “classic” approaches: mechanical and chemical finishing
Historically, many finishes were mechanical (for example, raising, shearing, singeing) or chemical (resins, coatings, oxidants, halogen-based routes). These methods can be effective, but they may consume significant water and chemicals, and can create wastewater that is complex to treat.
A well-known example is “superwash” shrink-resist finishing for wool. A widely used industrial route involves chlorination followed by a polymer coating (often referred to as the chlorine–Hercosett process). This route delivers reliable shrink resistance, but it has been criticized because it can generate wastewater pollution with AOX (adsorbable organic halogens) and involves significant resource use—one reason why alternatives have been researched for years.
The rise of enzyme-based finishing: milder conditions, smarter selectivity
From the late 20th century onwards, enzymes became increasingly important in textiles because they can catalyse highly specific reactions under relatively mild conditions. Enzymes are now established in several textile processes, including denim finishing and “bio-polishing” of cellulosics, and are often discussed as routes to reduce processing impacts while improving product quality. involves chlorination followed by a polymer coating (often referred to as the chlorine–Hercosett process). This route delivers reliable shrink resistance, but it has been criticized because it can generate wastewater pollution with AOX (adsorbable organic halogens) and involves significant resource use – one reason why alternatives have been researched for years.
A key idea in bio-polishing is that enzymes can reduce surface fuzz on cotton and related fibres, giving a smoother surface and improved pilling resistance.
But enzymes also come with a classic challenge: if an enzyme penetrates too deeply into a fibre structure (instead of acting mainly at the surface), it can cause unwanted strength loss or over-processing. Research comparing “free” enzymes versus more constrained approaches (such as immobilized enzymes) often highlights this same principle: controlling where the enzyme can act can improve surface effects while better preserving fabric strength.
This “localization problem” is exactly where acib’s XXL-enzyme concept enters.
Why the detergent industry is another central part of the fibre-protection story
A textile mill can deliver a beautiful fabric on day one. But “textile durability” is ultimately decided in the home, because the harshest, most repeated stress a garment experiences is laundering: water plus chemicals plus heat plus mechanical agitation, again and again. That is exactly why detergent and laundry-care companies are increasingly pulled into the fibre-protection debate. Their entire category promise is built on a difficult equation: remove more stains at lower temperatures, keep colours bright, and keep fabrics looking “like new”, all without harming the fibres.
The pressure is rising on several fronts at once.
The industry is pushing hard toward cold-water and eco washing because heating the wash is widely considered the biggest lever for reducing laundry’s climate footprint, and major consumer-goods and cleaning supply chains are actively driving that shift.
Cold and eco programmes, however, make chemistry slower. To keep cleaning power high, formulators increasingly rely on stronger enzymatic performance (more robust enzymes, better activity at lower temperatures, and more sophisticated enzyme “cocktails”).
At the same time, detergent brands are not only selling “clean”. They are selling “fabric care”. A prominent example is cellulase-based fabric care: suppliers explicitly market advanced cellulases as removing fuzz and pills from cotton fibres so fabrics look newer for longer, wash after wash.
Here is the catch, and it is the missing piece the sector keeps running into: the more active and more effective the enzyme system becomes, the higher the risk, that it starts damaging the textile.
This is not theoretical. Textile-focused sources have long described that cellulase mixtures can lead to unacceptable strength loss and that the process can be difficult to control. And on the protein-fibre side, it’s been shown that proteases in biological detergents can irreversibly damage wool or silk, leading to loss of strength and shape and poor colour fastness if exposure is not controlled.
So the detergent industry’s real pain point is not simply “we need enzymes.” It’s “we need higher-performing, more active enzymes to keep cold-wash cleaning and fabric-care promises credible, but we also need a robust way to prevent those same enzymes from weakening fabrics.”
The core technical challenge with enzymes: how do you get “surface benefits” without “interior damage”?
Enzymes are powerful because they can be selective and work under mild conditions. But in textiles, “power” is a double-edged sword: if an enzyme diffuses into the fibre interior, it may start modifying structural regions you would rather keep intact, potentially reducing strength or causing over-processing.
This is why “where the enzyme acts” is just as important as “what the enzyme does.”
While one way of tackling this is to physically constrain enzymes to retain desirable surface effects while reducing negative impacts, for example with immobilization.
acib’s project offer builds on a related, very intuitive principle: make the enzyme effectively “bigger” so it cannot easily enter the fibre interior.
Why immobilization isn’t the missing solution in laundry
A seemingly obvious idea is enzyme immobilization: attach enzymes to a solid support so they are physically constrained. In practice, that approach is hard to translate into detergent and laundering, because immobilization typically introduces mass-transfer limitations (substrates must diffuse to the immobilized enzyme), activity losses during immobilization, leakage/leaching, and added system complexity and cost—issues repeatedly discussed as practical barriers in immobilized enzyme applications.
For consumer laundry, where performance must be uniform across millions of wash cycles and many machine types, adding a carrier-based “enzyme delivery system” is usually the opposite of what companies want.
Why XXL-enzymes fit the detergent problem much better
acib’s XXL-enzyme concept targets the detergent industry’s core dilemma directly: keep the convenience of soluble enzymes, but make their action surface-selective by design.
Instead of anchoring enzymes to a support, XXL-enzymes are engineered to be “bigger” in a hydrodynamic sense so they are less able to diffuse into the fibre interior. The goal is diffusion-controlled bio-finishing: strong surface effects where pilling and fuzz originate, while protecting the fibre interior that provides strength and lifetime. 
This matters because it offers a credible pathway to the outcome detergent companies are chasing: more effective enzyme-driven cleaning and fabric-care benefits (especially in cold/eco washing), with a built-in mechanism to reduce the risk that “more active” also means “more damaging.”
And it connects cleanly to another growing laundry-care pressure: microfibre shedding and fabric ageing. Washing conditions influence fibre release, and the industry is under reputational and regulatory pressure to show it can reduce the downstream impacts of laundering. A surface-protecting approach that aims to reduce fuzz formation and surface damage speaks directly to that direction.
In short, detergent companies are being pushed toward higher enzymatic power to deliver cold-wash performance and fabric-care benefits, but they are missing a reliable “control knob” that prevents fibre weakening. XXL-enzymes are proposed as exactly that control knob: soluble, scalable, and diffusion-limited to the surface.
One platform, multiple fibre families
A major strength of the offer is that it is not limited to a single fibre type. The project describes enzyme-class selection and tuning to address different substrates:
For keratin fibres (such as wool), enlarged proteases are proposed for anti-felting and handle improvements. For cellulosics (such as cotton and viscose), enlarged cellulase/hemicellulase variants are described for controlled depilling and surface smoothing. For synthetics and regenerated fibres, enlarged cutinases/lipases/esterases are positioned for gentle surface tuning or finish management rather than bulk polymer attack.
This “surface-selective across fibre families” message matters for industry because many real products are blends, and many brands manage portfolios that include cotton basics, wool knits, and synthetic performance items.
How acib verifies “surface-only” action
Surface localization is verified using fluorescence microscopy of labelled enzyme variants. In other words, the question “Did the enzyme stay at the surface?” is treated as something to measure and prove, not just assume.
What collaboration with acib looks like
acib’s structures its projects for industrial co-development rather than a one-size-fits-all product. The proposal is to co-develop a lab-to-pilot program with an industrial partner, selecting the enzyme class and “enlargement route,” defining process windows (pH, temperature, liquor ratio, dwell time, pretreatments), and optimizing recipes on the partner’s actual substrates.
A key commercial point is that all project IP can be fully transferred to the company partner, and that acib is happy to start under NDA and provide a tailored proposal with milestones, timeline, and budget aligned to the partner’s compliance and production constraints.
The development status is already TRL 4 (“technology validated in lab”), which means the concept has been demonstrated at laboratory scale and is ready for structured scale-up and piloting with industrial materials and conditions.
Current status: acib is looking for industrial partners
acib is currently looking for industrial partners to commercialize the “Fibre Protection using XXL-Enzymes” technology, aiming to keep textiles stronger for longer across cellulosic, keratin, and synthetic fibres by confining enzymatic action to the surface.
Whether you are a brand, mill, or chemical/finishing technology provider exploring durable, lower-impact fibre protection—especially where surface quality, pilling, felting, or controlled surface tuning are key—acib welcomes confidential discussions under NDA and can provide a tailored project proposal.
Picture by acib