Textile Coloration Technologies

Abstract

Textile coloration is one of the most vital processes in textile wet processing as it brings a tangible value to the textile materials by enhancing their look. However, a huge quantity of water is used as the medium for coloration with a consequent high amount of energy. Needless to mention, the primary ingredient used in coloration is dyestuff. At the end of dyeing, unexhausted dye, unfixed dyes, and other chemicals and auxiliaries get discharged as effluent. Heavy usage of salts, alkali, oxidizing and reducing agents, surfactants as wetting agents, dispersants, defoamers, soap, and detergents further increases the effluent load. Such contaminated effluent becomes very much difficult to treat as well as biodegrade. This creates environmental pollution problems. Thus, it can be stated that the textile sector is an energy-, chemical-, and water-intensive industry, putting maximum stress on the worldwide resources and industry with high potential for pollution. With growing awareness about environmental issues from consumers to the government and depleting resources, present times are very much uncertain but transformational for the textile processing industry to satisfy the ever-growing demands on the quantum of textiles to be processed with strict enforcement of the environmental regulations. Thus, it is inevitable to focus on the sustainability of textile wet processing with the emergence of new technologies in the textile industry. Very few such emerging technologies have been fully commercialized until now, and many have the potential for commercialization. This chapter covers some of those emerging techniques being widely used or have the potential to be used for textile coloration.