TITLE:
Rainbow of Natural Dyes on Textiles Using Plants Extracts: Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Processes
AUTHORS:
Jyoti Arora, Prerna Agarwal, Gunjan Gupta
KEYWORDS:
Natural Dyes, Rainbow, Textiles, Eco-Friendly, Sustainable
JOURNAL NAME:
Green and Sustainable Chemistry,
Vol.7 No.1,
February
24,
2017
ABSTRACT: Indians have been considered as forerunners in the art of natural dyeing.
Although indigenous knowledge system has been practiced over the years in the
past, the use of natural dyes has diminished over generations due to lack of
documentation and precise knowledge of the
extracting and dyeing techniques. As a result, natural dyes are not
commercially successful. Presently, all environmentally unfriendly synthetic
compounds are used for dyeing textile materials. They are non-biodegradable,
carcinogenic and generate water pollution as well as waste disposal problems.
Natural dyes provide a reasonable solution to these problems. Thus, it is
imperative to develop technology for extraction of natural dyes and for their
application on textile materials. In this study, attempt has been made to
extract natural dyes from a variety of plants sources (such as rhizomes of turmeric, Curcuma longa; fruits of harda, Terminalia
chebula; petals of
safflower, Carthamus tinctorius;
roots of barberry, Berberis lycium etc.) using specific techniques. These dyes were
tested for their dyeing potential on different textile materials
(cotton, silk and wool). Dyeing was done using three different dyeing
techniques (pre-, simultaneous- and post-mordanting) wherein different mordants
such as alum, copper sulphate and ferrous sulphate etc., were used to fix dye
on to the textile material. A rainbow of natural dyes was obtained with varied
shades of each colour. Shade cards were prepared for each dye and the colour
obtained varied depending on the type of the mordant applied and the mordanting
technique used.