Simultaneously Dyeing and Durable Press Finishing of Cotton Fabric

Research Article

Adv Res Text Eng. 2023; 8(2): 1086.

Simultaneously Dyeing and Durable Press Finishing of Cotton Fabric

Ahmed Mohammed Nuru*

Wollo University, Kombolcha Institute of Technology, School of Textile, Leather, and Fashion Technology, Kombolcha, Ethiopia

*Corresponding author: Ahmed Mohammed Nuru Wollo University, Kombolcha Institute of Technology, School of Textile, Leather, and Fashion Technology, Kombolcha, Ethiopia. Tel: +251931113324 Email: ahme2005a@gmail.com

Received: July 14, 2023 Accepted: September 01, 2023 Published: September 08, 2023

Abstract

Cotton is the most widely used cellulosic material in the textile industry, especially for apparel purposes but, has a tendency to wrinkle badly, degrading its aesthetic value and have poor smoothed drying properties. Dyeing and crease resistance finishing process are applied to improve the wrinkle resistance and its aesthetic value respectively. Conventionally, dyeing and durable finishing of cotton is conducted separately by dyeing cotton first, and then finished with a cross-linking agent. However, these traditional processes are time and chemical consume processes. Many researchers have attempted to combine dyeing and easy-care finishing process in to one step. The challenge was difficult to produce fabrics that have deep shades, good Colour fastness and excellent crease recovery performance simultaneously. Hence, the aim of this work was to conduct combined dyeing and easy-care finishing of cotton fabrics with reactive dyes, citric acid and fibroin solution using pad–dry–cure methods. In this work, fibroin is used as an additive to enhance the degree of cross-linking and as a cat ionizing agent to improve the exhaustion of the dye. The parameters were investigated and optimize with respect to colour strength, colour fastness and mechanical properties of the treated fabric. The efficiency of combined dyed and finished fabrics with reactive dye, citric acid and fibroin has been studied. Better colour strength, crease recovery angle, breaking strength, and fastness properties were obtained as compared with conventional process. When the concentration of fibroin increased the K/S values, colour fastness properties, and crease resistance properties were improved.

Keywords: Citric acid; Crease recovery angle; Dyeing; Fibroin; Strength retention

Introduction

Cotton fabric is the most widely used natural cellulosic raw material in the textile industry, especially for apparel purposes due to has excellent properties such as good strength, higher water absorbency, moisture content, comfortable to wear, non-toxic for health and easy for colour retention [1,2]. The use of cotton-based product is not only limited to apparel purposes but used in different applications like functional textiles, technical textiles, and much more demand. Among the total textile production, 50% of the application is based on cellulosic-cotton products. To increase the satisfaction of the customer colouration and finishing are imparted on the textile material to improve the appearance and functional properties of the fabric. Reactive dyes are the best colorants for the coloration of cellulose-based materials due to easy application and better fastness properties [3]. However, Cotton fabric has two main limitations. One of the main drawbacks of cellulosic materials are easy wrinkling after washing due to the swelling of cellulosic fibres by moisture [4]. During washing, the cellulosic fibres are stressed due to mechanical forces and swelling of the internal polymer chains of the amorphous areas to relieve the stress. Then, the stretched internal molecular chains form new hydrogen bonds in the stretched places so, the fabric holds the creases [1]. The other limitation is dyeing the cotton fabric with reactive dye leads to electrostatic repulsion and makes the exhaustion of the dye difficult due to the development of a negative charge on cotton fabric and reactive dyes when immersed in water [5]. In order to overcome these problems many textile industries, use an enormous amount of electrolyte and alkali for exhaustion and fixation purposes respectively. However, the salt added to the dyebath and alkalis are neither destroyed nor exhausted after dyeing process that causing serious environmental pollution.

Easy-care finishing process is applied on cotton fabric in order to avoid crease formation by creating cross-linking between adjacent cellulose chains in cotton fibres. The most popular type of cross-linking agent is dimethyl dihydroxy ethylene urea (DMDHEU) which has the challenge of formaldehyde release that has an impact on human health and environmental issues with severe tensile strength loss, tear strength loss, and poor abrasion resistance properties [6,7].

In order to overcome the problem issue with respect to colouration and finishing many researchers have investigated and developed formaldehyde-free easy-care agents for finishing and chemical and physical modifications of cotton fabric with amide compounds for coloration problems.

However, conventionally, dyeing and finishing of textile materials are conducted separately, by dyeing cotton first, then finished with a cross-linking agent to obtain the desired colour and durable finish properties. But these traditional processes are water, energy and chemical intensive processes. Nowadays, due to global awareness on environmental pollution, climate change, global warming, and sustainability, both academic research and industrial product development have been intensified to seek for sustainable dyeing and finishing processes would be merged for significant saving in energy, chemicals, water, labour, time and safe the environment using biodegradable plant extract polymers [8]. Combined dyeing and finishing of cotton fabric are carried out based on incorporating the dyestuff into the finishing bath which is a relatively more economical process due to reduced energy consumption, production time, dyeing and finishing chemicals, water usage, and also physical properties of the fabric [9,10]. Many researchers have attempted to combine dyeing and easy-care finishing process in to one step. But the main challenge has been producing treated fabrics that have deep shades, good washing fastness and excellent crease recovery performance simultaneously.

Dong et al. [1,9] Conducted simultaneous dyeing and durable press finishing of cotton fabric with reactive dyes and citric acid finishing agent by using a pad-dry-cure process and obtained relatively satisfactory properties of dyed and finished cotton fabric with appropriate adjustment of the treating conditions.

Choi studied combined dyeing and durable press finishing of cotton fabric with dialdehyde finishing agent and monochlorotriazinyl reactive dye with glyoxal and glutaraldehyde in the dye-finishing bath tend to inhibit dye sorption but increase dye fixation.

The present study has been come up with the biodegradable natural polymer which used as a durable finish cross linking agent treatment on cotton fabric and used as a cationization agent which is comparatively cheap, environmentally safe, and worth add product for textile. In the present study, an attempt has been made to find the best optimum parameters used for CA and fibroin solution as a DP finish cross linking agent treatment on cotton fabric and reactive colourants to obtain better colour shade, colour fastness properties and excellent crease recovery performance of combined dyeing and finishing of cotton fabric simultaneously.

Materials and Methods

Materials and Chemicals

Full bleached 100% plain weave cotton fabric (100%), having the following structural characteristics, was used: 34Nm countyarn (warp, weft), 65end per inch; 54 Picks per inch; and fabric mass per unit area with 150 g/m2 fabric was sourced from Kombolcha Textile Share Factory, Kombolcha, Ethiopia. Bombyx mori silk cocoon was obtained from Wereta Agriculture College, Gondor, Ethiopia. Fibroin solution and citric acid were used as a crease resistance finishing agent. Sodium carbonate Ethanol, Calcium chloride, and hydrochloric acid are laboratory reagent grade. Sodium dihydrogen phosphate was used to catalyse the crosslinking reaction. The reactive dyes used in this study was Cl Reactive Red 5 Mono- chlorotriazines. Deionized water was used in all experiments.

Preparation of Silk Fibroin Solution

Degumming raw cocoon was done using aqueous sodium carbonate solution (0.5% o.w.f.) for 60 minutes with soap (0.5% o.w.f.) and then washed with distilled water at boiling point. This was done to remove sericin plus other impurities and then rinsed thoroughly in warm water. The degummed silk fibroin was then dissolved in a ternary solvent system of calcium chloride, water and ethyl alcohol (CaCl2: water: ethyl alcohol = 1:8: 2, molar ratio) with a liquor ratio of 1:15 at 85°C for 30 minutes [9]. The aqueous silk fibroin solution was hydrolysed at 100°C for 3 hrs.

Simultaneous Dyeing and Finishing Process

The fabric was padded at 80% wet pick-up with a bath containing various amounts of cross-linking agent (Citric acid), fibroin solution, reactive dyes, catalyst (Sodium di-hydrogen phosphate), sequestering agents, and wetting agent. Fabric was dried at 100°C for 2 minutes and cured at various curing temperature (130°C, 1540°C, 150°C, and 160°C) for 2 min. Soaping was carried out at 50°C for 30 min with 2 g/L sodium carbonate and 5 g/L non-ionic detergent. Finally, cold wash was given followed by drying.

Evaluation of Fabric Properties

Colour Strength (k/s) (using a computer color matching system X 4000 spectrophotometer under illuminant D65 using a 10° standard observer), Breaking strength(ASTM-D 5034 method), tear strength (ASTM-D 1424method), wrinkle recovery angle (AATCC Test Methods 66), and colour fastness are the properties of the combined dyed and finished cotton fabric that were evaluated after treatment.

Results and Discussion

Effect of Citric Acid on Colour Strength

When the citric acid concentration was increased from 20g/l to 50g/l by keeping the other variables constant the colour yield decreases significantly. The reason for decreasing the colour yield with increasing the concentration of citric acid due to shifting of the dye bath PH towards acidic conditions which is not compatible with the satisfactory fixation of reactive dyes. However, when citric acid with fibroin used as finishing agent and even if the dye bath PH shifted to acidic condition the colour yield is not significantly decreased. Due to imparting of more number amino groups on the surface of cotton fabric which comes from fibroin solution and turned to a positive charge under acidic conditions during dyeing, and which increased the attraction potential of reactive dyes towards cotton fabric under acidic conditions.

Effect of Fibroin Concentration on Colour Strength

The effect of the fibroin concentration on the colour strength of the treated cotton fabric was studied. When the concentration of fibroin solution increases and keeping the other variables constant the colour strength of the dyed fabric also increases as shown in the Figure 2. As the result indicates the K/S value of the sample treated with citric acid with alone is 2.63, while the sample treated with citric/fibroin is 6.86. These shows a combination of citric acid and fibroin for combined dyeing and finishing gradually increases K/S values with increasing fibroin concentration. Colour strength of treated dyed cotton fabrics increase as a function of silk fibroin concentration in the finishing solution increase. The result indicates that more amino groups from silk fibroin are present on the surface of cotton fabric. The amino groups turned to a positive charge under acidic conditions during dyeing, which increased the potential of ionic attraction and thus led to increased reactive dye uptake.