Novel, sustainable and water efficient nano bubble dyeing of cotton fabric

Abstract

Textile is one of the basic human needs and almost all the textile fabrics are colored. Unfortunately, the extensive amounts of clean water, petrochemical based dyes, and chemicals are used for textile dyeing. After dyeing, these substances are discharged as pollutants. The disposal of this discharge is a serious issue which pollutes the natural environment. Therefore, there is a dire need to develop the novel dyeing processes with extremely low consumptions of water, dyes and chemicals. Nevertheless, the technologies with the low liquor ratios bring several challenges such as uneven dyeing, poor fastness, limited colors, lack of skills, and complicated processes. To address such challenges, this research achieves the extremely low liquor ratio of 1:1 using nano bubble technology. For the first time, this research describes novel, sustainable, and water efficient nano bubble dyeing of cotton with 11 different reactive dyes. The fabric dyeing performance properties of shade depth, dry rubbing fastness, wet rubbing fastness, and washing fastness were assessed for the liquor ratio of 1:1. The performance of 1:1 dyeing was compared with the conventional dyeing having liquor ratios of 1:5 and 1:10 for the same dyes. All the 11 reactive dyes, dyed at liquor ratio of 1:1 exhibited the uniform dyeing, acceptable fastness properties, and superior air permeability along with zero liquid discharge in the main dyeing cycle. Therefore, this research confirms the effectiveness of the newly developed dyeing process at extremely low liquor ratio of 1:1 for reactive cotton dyeing with significant saving of water, energy, dyes, chemicals and effluent load.