Sustainable dyeing of ramie fiber with ternary reactive dye mixtures in liquid ammonia

Abstract

Liquid ammonia (LA) dyeing is a zero-effluent and sustainable dyeing technology investigated for textiles. In the present work, three bi-functional reactive dyes, Reactive Red 195 (R195), Reactive Yellow 145 (Y145), and Reactive Blue 194 (B194), were used to dye ramie fiber in liquid ammonia, and the dye exhaustion (%) and fixation (%) were compared with ramie fibers dyed with the same dyes in an aqueous dyeing method. Dyeing with a single reactive dye, a binary dye mixture, and a ternary dye mixture in liquid ammonia showed that all the dyes are highly compatible as they showed similar uptake. The total dye exhaustion percentage of dyeing with the ternary dye mixture was 22.6%. After dyeing, a cationic fixing agent (CFA)/decamethylcyclopentasiloxane (D5) micro-emulsion was applied and the dye fixation rate was 96.7% accompanied by high colorfastness to washing (Grade 4–5) and produced uniform shades. Finally, a color triangle of dyed ramie fibers was prepared to exhibit many colorful shades. This work demonstrates the viability of dyeing of textile fibers in liquid ammonia.