The camel coat can be divided into upper and lower layers based on the external shape. The upper layer is sparse and upright coarse wool; the lower layer is thick wool, which is mainly composed of camel cashmere mixed with small amount of coarse hair. This chapter introduces the basic characteristics of camel hair, such as morphological structure, microstructure, fiber type, and density. Then it introduces the process characteristics of camel wool, the net wool rate, camel hair grades, the photometric and thermodynamic properties of camel cashmere. Finally it gives some camel cashmere and hair products. All contents try to give detailed experimental data and images and insist on giving a more comprehensive and scientific explanation for camel hair.
TopIntroduction
Camel hair is an animal fiber collected from the camel. The Bactrian camel gives more hair (wool) than the dromedary and is of higher quality, used for making padded cloth, quilts and mattresses, rope, clothes, tents, carpets, robes, saddle girths and blankets (Barat & Morteza, 2015). Therefore, the properties and applications of the Bactrian camel hair are mainly discussed in present chapter. Bactrian camel is a species with a history of several thousand years and closely related to human clothing, food, shelter, travel, and special commercial use. According to incomplete statistics the total number of Bactrian camels in the world would be around 2.8 million (Bright, Jing, Heller, Sirigu & Mutu, 2017) although official number in FAO database is less than one million (Faye & Bonnet, 2012). However, distribution of Bactrian camel is very limited, and mainly distributed in Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, adapted to specific weather conditions of desert and semi-desert regions (Galindar & Chagan, 2012; Feng, 2007). Bactrian camels are tall and strong, covered with hair coat with different lengths and thicknesses (Figure 1). The history, population and distribution of camels worldwide were discussed in Chapter 1.
Figure 1. The hair coat of a bactrian camel
The coat of Bactrian camel belongs to mixed hair, that is, heterogeneous hair, including long hair, coarse hair and soft hair (Feng, 2007; Wei, Yin, & Wang, 1985). The Bactrian camel hair is irregular and has no obvious braided or clustered structure due to the slender camel hair fibers, curved and less of oil sweat. The hair bundle of the coat is centered on a coarse hair, and there are several or even a dozen soft hair with varying thickness around it. Therefore, based on the external shape, camel coat can be divided into upper and lower layers, the upper layer is composed of sparse and upright coarse hair (also contain long hair in certain areas), and the lower layer is composed of thick soft hair (Figure 2).