Waterless Dyeing in Textiles

Chaitali Debnath and Sankar Roy Maulik

Department of Silpa-Sadana, Textile Section
Palli Samgathana Vibhaga, Visva Bharati (A Central University)

Abstract

Waterless dyeing is the process by which dyeing is performed without water, that is also
called dry dyeing. In today’s world water pollution along with drought, inefficiency, and an
exploding population has contributed to a crisis, threatening the sources upon which we
rely. The textile industry leave one of the largest water footprints on the planet and is also
responsible for polluting the environment with chemical treated waste. It is estimated that 17-
20 % of industrial water pollution is generated by textile dyeing process. Hence textile dyeing
is the no. 2 polluter of clean water on earth, following agriculture. The increasing
environmental concerns towards saving the water bodies have led to the development of
waterless dyeing technologies.³

Water less dyeing can be served in several ways. No 1. Airflow dyeing process: This concept
of waterless dyeing was invented by Wilhelm Christ and subsequently patented in 1978 by
then, which was developed and parented by Colorep, a California-based sustainable
technology company. The key factor of this technology is airflow with air being a perfectly
sustainable transport medium in jet dyeing machine was a big step toward reducing water and
chemicals consumption. This process has unlimited flexibility with regards to all fibre except
pure wool.

No 2. Dry dyeing with CO2:

Dyeing with CO2 was invented in Germany twenty five years ago. DyeCoo Textile Systems,
a Dutch company implied this process of waterless dyeing of textile materials in 2008 A
super critical liquefied form of carbon dioxide dyes fabrics, providing same results as the
conventional water based methods. Carbon dioxide, has so far been the most widely used,
because of its convenient critical point (Tc=31◦C and Pc=74 bar), cheapness, chemically
inert, non-flammability, stability in radioactive applications and non-toxicity. CO2 is non
toxic obtained from natural resources and cam be easily recycled in dyeing process. Currently
the super critical Carbon dioxide dyeing is limited to synthetic and polyester fabric with
disperse dyes and has already embraced by major brands such as IKEA ,Adidas and Nike.
Supercritical dyeing requires higher pressures than that are currently available in
conventional jet dyeing machines. To obtain the required temperature and pressures,
autoclaves with large holding capacities must be used in the dyeing process.

The waterless dyeing process not only reduces fresh water demand but also prevents the
large volumes of polluted water that are typical of water based dyeing .

Keywords: Airflow, CO2, Pollution, Sustainability, Waterless