Abstract
Copyright: © 2013 Ibrahim DF. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Enzymes have been used for more than 50 years in the detergent, textile, food industries, to name just a few. In these industries enzymes replace chemicals and minimize water, raw material and energy consumption. Natures own technology provides us with environmentally friendly solutions and better products. Enzymes are the natural solution to industrial problems. With enzymes we can maintain the living standards we have today and at the same time preserve the environment for our children. In textile industry, enzymes are used because: they are accelerating the reactions, act only on specific substrates, operate under mild conditions, are safe and easy to control, can replace harsh chemicals and are biologically degradable [1]. In textile manufacturing the use of enzymes has a long tradition. The enzymatic desizing of cotton with α-amylases is state-of-the-art since many decades’. Moreover, cellulases, pectinases, hemicellulases, lipases and catalases are used in different cotton pre-treatment and finishing processes [2].
Highlights
Cellulase enzymes are sometimes used on cotton fabrics during wet processing which removes loose fibers as biological singing [3]
The traditional method of removing the residual hydrogen peroxide is by rinsing the fabric a number of times with water
1- Using of enzymes in pretreatment of cotton fabrics combined with tannic acid improve dyeing with natural dyes without using any metallic mordents [23]
Summary
Enzymes have been used for more than 50 years in the detergent, textile, food industries, to name just a few. The presence of hydrogen peroxide in the dye bath can cause decolorization of reactive dyes, which are sensitive to oxidization [1] These rinsing steps were canceled when using enzymes because the bleaching agent is decomposed and the residues of the enzyme have no effect on textile fibers tensile strength or dyestuffs. A catalase enzyme used for bleach cleanup in the textile industry ensures complete removal of excess H2O2 combined with the reactive dyeing bath in many times after optimize the conditions [10,11] Besides all these uses of enzymes there are some trials combined two or three procedures of cotton treatments using enzymes, such as: Combining of pectinase enzyme (scouring) and peracitic acid (bleaching) in one bath [12]. A fast integrated enzyme-based pretreatment process concept for cotton containing textiles has been developed for operation in the continuous mode [22] (Figure 1)
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