Using biodegradable organic salt for cotton garment dyeing to reduce effluent pollution

Abstract

AbstractThe replacement of inorganic salt and alkali in the reactive dyeing of cotton textiles with organic biodegradable compound has been explored in recent years. We report the use of organic salt, tetra sodium salt of glutamic acid diacetic acid (GLDA‐Na4) in the batchwise dyeing of cotton garment as an exhausting and fixing agent. The reactive dye, CI Reactive Black 5 was selected for the present study. The results revealed that the maximum K/S value of 25.5 and fixation of 90.74% was obtained using GLDA‐Na4 at laboratory scale experiments. Furthermore, the effluent samples test results demonstrated considerably reduced total dissolved solids (TDS) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) contents with GLDA‐Na4 in comparison to the inorganic chemicals. The colourfastness to light, rubbing and washing have demonstrated similar ratings with GLDA‐Na4 and inorganic chemicals. The tensile strength of samples was enhanced by using GLDA‐Na4.