The influence of mixed thickeners on printing over lyocell knitted fabric

Abstract

A quest was carried out to print on light weight lyocell knitted fabric with two mono-functional reactive dyes using pure guar gum (GG) or substituted guar gum (SGG) in combination with sodium alginate (Al) at different ratios. For each dyestuff, the print paste was prepared using mixed thickeners, namely GG/Al or SGA/Al at five different ratios. All samples were compared with the recipe containing pure sodium alginate. The empirical data show that the rheological behaviorisms of print paste-like viscosity and its other physical characteristics, such as paste add-on percentage (%) and penetration percentage (%), were dependent on the percentage of GG or SGG present in the thickener combination prepared with sodium Alginate. The combination of thickeners of these types also creates an impact on the final excellence of printed fabric, such as the colour yield, sharpness, stiffness of the fabric and the fastness of the colour. However, a few qualities are also dye dependent. The SGG/A combination gives a superior result when combining all the data with GG/A. Alginate with the small addition of SGG viz. the 80/20 or 60/40 mixture shows an excellent result in terms of printing characteristics. The thickener had no influential effect on the colour fastness rating.