Plasma treatments for sustainable textile processing

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong 

The aim of the pretreaunent process is to bring the fabrics to a state where they can be dyed, printed, or finished, that is, they have the properties required to pick up and retain dyes and other chemicals used in the process, without causing any fault or damage to the material. The pretreated textile materials should have the following properties (Leung et al., 1996)  

Sustainable Apparel. http //dx.doi.orgU0.1016/B978-l-78242-339-3.00003-0 Copyright 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 

Coloration broadly means dyeing and printing. The objective of dyeing is to achieve uniform coloration of the material, usually a prespecified color. Any significant difference in the color requested by the customer and the actual color and any unevenness of the color of a fabric is immediately apparent (Broadbent, 2001). Dyeing a textile material can be achieved in a number of different ways  

All of these ways require that the fibers, at some stage, absorb the dye, or an appropriate precursor, from an aqueous solution. This process is essentially reversible. However, the precipitation of a pigment and reaction with the fiber are irreversible chemical processes. Generation of pollution fiom dyeing processes occurs in two critical ways (Broadbent, 2001)  

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