An investigation of the environmentally friendly pigment colouration

  • Qingqing Cao

Student thesis: Phd

Abstract

This research has investigated the modification of cotton fabric and pigment dyeing system in order to improve the colouration properties, such as rub fastness, wash fastness, colour strength and fabric handle of the textile material. It involved four different approaches based on pre-cationization of the fabric, incorporation of crosslinkers into the binder formulation, UVO pre-treatment of the fabric, and wet fluorocarbon treatment and dry plasma polymerisation treatments.It has been reported that the Matrix OSD pigment dyeing system offers benefits in terms of processing cost and environmental impact and from the initial studies it was apparent that while dry rub fastness, mechanical rigidity and washing performance were generally acceptable the wet rub fastness of the printed fabrics presented a technical challenge. Therefore in this study the colour wet rub fastness was regarded as the main performance indicator to be targeted and improved. Cationizing the cotton fabrics prior to pigment dyeing improved the wet rub fastness performance of the Matrix OSD dyeing system, while the other fastness properties were in general unchanged. Similarly crosslinking treatments enhanced the colour fastness performance, due to the improvement of the bonding between the binder and fabrics. The crosslinking/crease resist pre-treatment offers better performance than the combined application method in terms of improving the wet rub fastness. Surface modification of textile materials is able to modify the textile wettability, adhesion, dyeability and handle and therefore has been studied with a view to improving the durability of the surface pigment dyed coating. However in this study the benefits of a UV/Ozone (UVO) pre-treatment previously observed for other long liquor fabric dyeing studies of textiles was not observed and it was established that the pigment dyeing performance was reduced after the sensitised photo-oxidation treatment. The investigation demonstrated that the fluorocarbon treatments had a beneficial effect on colour wash fastness and wet rub fastness, while dry rub fastness was marginally reduced at higher fluorocarbon application levels. Different fluorocarbons were examined in this study, and the aftertreatment with Shield F-01 and Shield extender FCD offered the best results. A range of plasma pre-treatments prior to pigment dyeing were also examined but only a marginal benefit on the colour fastness properties and to some extent slightly decreased dry rub fastness was observed. In contrast the plasma after-treatments, using both argon (Ar) and nitrogen (N2) atmospheres, improved the fastness, particularly wet fastness, particularly when the binder heat curing process was before plasma after-treatment.
Date of Award31 Dec 2013
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorChristopher Carr (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • pigment dyeing
  • colour fastness
  • Pigment colouration

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