Dyeing Kinetics of Flax/Cotton Blended Woven Fabrics

In the textile industries Wool/Cotton blend is no doubt the oldest fibre combination of all, however, the wool is not readily available and is expensive. In the long run it is anticipated that Flax/Cotton blend will address the raw material crisis in wool/cotton blend. Since flax and cotton have similar physical and chemical properties chemical processing and dyeing of the blend may pose less problems. Furthermore cost of production will be reduced. Four different blends of flax/cotton woven fabrics (10/90, 30/70, 50/50 and 70/30) and 100% cotton woven fabric for control and comparison, were desized scoured, bleached and mercerized using normal methods for pretreatment of cotton fibre. The five samples were dyed with Solophenyl Brown direct dye and related dyeing kinetics measurements were done based on visible light colourimetry using a UV- Visible spectrophotometer. The highest percentage dye exhaustion was recorded by sample D (50/50 F/C) at 80oC. Also the flax/cotton blends exhibit maximum diffusion coefficient at a lower temperature (80oC) than that of the control (90oC). Generally the diffusion coefficient was found to increase with increasing flax content i the blend.

Autorentext

Ahmed Tijjani Sule holds B. Sc (Tech) Degree and MSc in Textile Science and Technology from Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. He is currently a PhD Student at A.B.U. Zaria and a lecturer in the Department of Textile Technology and Fashion Design, Kano State Polytechnic, Kano-Nigeria.