Hydrolysis of Sugar for Dyeing of Cotton Fabric with Sulphur Black

The importance of sulfur dyeing of cellulosic fibers, particularly cotton, is realized economically throughout the dyeing industry. At the present time, dyeing with sulfur dyes requires the use of various auxiliaries, many of which have adverse effects on the environment. The most damaging of these is the reducing agent sodium sulphide, required to reduce the dye molecules to a water-soluble leuco form to enable adsorption and diffusion into the fiber. In this study, attempts have been made to replace the sodium sulfide used within the sulfur dyeing process with a variety of environmentally friendly reducing sugars. The redox potential of various hexose and pentose monosaccharide’s and reducing disaccharides was recorded and compared. Subsequently, cotton was dyed with the world's most important sulfur dye, C. I. Sulfur Black 1, using the reducing sugars under alkaline conditions, and compared to dyeing secured by employing commercial sulfide reducing agents. It was observed that reducing sugars gave comparable, and in many cases superior, color strength and wash fastness results, with respect to the commercial sulfide-based reducing agents, which still account for the vast majority of sulfur dyeing processes and that pose significant environmental concern. Employment of reducing sugars in sulfur dyeing could provide a sustainable, nontoxic, biodegradable, cost-effective alternative to sodium polysulfide and sodium hydrogen sulfide. Hydrolysis of Sugar for Dyeing of Cotton Fabric with Sulphur Black Mebrahtom Teklehaimanot* and Tsion Amsalu Aksum University, Aksum, Ethiopia *Corresponding author: Mebrahtom Teklehaimanot, Textile Engineering Department, College of Engineering and Technology, Aksum University, Aksum, Ethiopia, E-mail: mebreat@gmail.com Received October 10, 2018; Accepted November 30, 2018; Published December 09, 2018 Citation: Teklehaimanot M, Amsalu T (2018) Hydrolysis of Sugar for Dyeing of Cotton Fabric with Sulphur Black. J Textile Sci Eng 8: 384. doi: 10.4172/21658064.1000384 Copyright: © 2018 Teklehaimanot M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.