Short clean dyeing of two-component cotton/polyamide fabrics through adaptive adjustment of the dye solution

Cotton/polyamide fabric is commonly colored separately using two kinds of dyes in the pad dyeing process, which leads to many shortcomings such as complex process flow, extensive usage of auxiliaries, high pollute on and so on. Based on the trait of reactive dye, a short-process clean pad dyeing for cotton/polyamide fabric just with reactive dye was developed in this paper. The system of self-adaptive adjustment of dye solution pH, which provided suitable color fixation conditions for cotton and polyamide, was developed to realize the short-process clean pad dyeing technology. The direct-steaming process after sample passing through padding mangle brought fabric with better color brightness compared with traditional drying-steaming procedure. The optimal concentration of dye and sodium trichloroacetic (TCA) were 25 g/L and 20 g/L, respectively. Initial pH value of dye liquor was 5, and the steaming time was recommended to be 25 min. The above conditions were determined to ensure less resource consumption and satisfactory color brightness. By calculation, the water consumption and production cost of dyeing 10 km length fabric (3 m width) could be reduced by about 67% and 28.9% respectively compared with the traditional process. This innovative dyeing technology solves the problems of traditional dyeing, such as high pollution and complicated process, and it provides a new way for cotton/polyamide fabric dyeing under the condition of friendly environment, less waste water and higher efficiency.