Moxibustion therapy is a popular treatment for various diseases in traditional Chinese medicine. It is known that the combustion byproduct of moxa ash from moxibustion therapy has various medicinal properties, however its application has been largely ignored. This paper developed a simple, green and effective process for finishing cotton with biomass waste of moxa ash. Bio performance of finished cotton and its value adding applications were explored. A comparison is made between moxa extracts and moxa ash, with functions such as anti-ultraviolet, antioxidant and antibacterial properties investigated. Results show that although compared with moxa extracts dyed cotton, moxa ash finished cotton lost certain strength in anti-ultraviolet and antioxidant activities due to decomposition of certain effective bio substances during combustion, it exhibited better performance than that of untreated cotton used as control, with UPF increased from 24 to 98 and ABTS·⁺ percentage radical scavenging from 8.5% to 13.7%. Results of antibacterial activity of moxa ash finished cotton is a highlight in this work. It is seen that while it is less effective in inhibiting fungus such as C. albicans, the moxa ash finished cotton is as effective (> 99% bacterial removal) as its moxa extracts counterpart in antibacterial activity against Gram-positive bacterial such as S. aureus and B. cereus, as well as in inhibiting certain type of Gram-negative bacterial strain such as E. coli. These outcomes have opened up a broad application of moxa ash as biomass waste in textile industry for medicare and healthcare use.

中文翻译：

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Moxa 燃烧废料及其对棉花的生物活性 -- 一种简单、绿色的整理工艺，旨在实现医用纺织品的可持续和增值应用


艾灸疗法是中医中治疗各种疾病的一种流行疗法。众所周知，艾灸疗法产生的艾灰燃烧副产物具有多种药用特性，但其应用在很大程度上被忽视了。本文开发了一种简单、绿色且有效的工艺，用于用艾灸灰的生物质废料整理棉花。探讨了成品棉的生物性能及其增值应用。对艾叶提取物和艾灰进行了比较，研究了抗紫外线、抗氧化和抗菌等功能。结果表明，虽然与艾灸提取物染色棉相比，艾灰整理棉在燃烧过程中会分解某些有效生物物质，因此失去了一定的抗紫外线和抗氧化活性，但表现出优于未处理的棉花性能，UPF 从 24 增加到 98，ABTS·⁺ 自由基清除百分比从 8.5% 到 13.7%。艾灰成品棉的抗菌活性结果是这项工作的一大亮点。可以看出，虽然艾灰整理棉在抑制白色念珠菌等真菌方面效果较差，但在对革兰氏阳性菌（如金黄色葡萄球菌和蜡样芽孢杆菌）的抗菌活性以及抑制某些类型的革兰氏阴性菌菌株（如大肠杆菌）方面，它与艾灸提取物一样有效（> 99% 的细菌去除率）.这些结果为艾灰作为生物质废料在纺织工业中用于医疗保险和医疗保健用途开辟了广泛的应用。