Eco Textiles & natural dyes Research Papers (original) (raw)

Currently, natural dyes are gaining interest in the society, creating a new market niche that values products obtained from natural raw materials, due to less damage to human health and the environment. A potential source for obtaining dye lies in industrial operation to obtain essential oil from eucalyptus leaves. It is a liquid waste generated in the distillation of the leaves, using water steam. A large volume of extract is generated and disposed as effluent of the process. Brazil is one of the worlds main producers of oil from eucalyptus leaves, especially Corymbia citriodora (formerly Eucalyptus), and there is, thus, significant potential for exploration of the effluent generated in the distillation of the leaves as raw material. With the support of a company in the oil production, it aimed to evaluate the potential of this extract as a natural dye, aiming at dyeing cotton. The characterization of waste effluent and natural dyestuff obtained was evaluated in terms of physical and chemical properties, such as total solids content, pH, density, condensed tannins content and color measurement by spectrophotometric analysis. In assessing the potential of the waste effluent as a natural dye, a study was conducted to determine the method of dyeing cotton, through various treatments which included changing variables such as temperature, time and concentration of natural dyestuff. In the dyed fabrics, it was evaluated the fastness properties of color in the light of a xenon arc and washing through the norms of the ABNT CB 17 - Textiles and Clothing. Both the waste effluent and the natural dyestuff presented an acid pH, total solids content of 3.4% and 48.1% and condensed tannin content of 0.6% and 10.9% respectively. Regarding the color of the extracts, both shown the brown color. The waste effluent had higher values of L*, a* b* than the natural dyestuff, and this was approximately to the black color, because the values of L*, a* b* were close to zero. The property with the larger variation in the colors of dyed fabrics was the L*. The values of E* also varied between treatments, with only treatment 9 was considered similar to reference 8, for this property. Concerning the results of washing fastness, the notes of color change were 3-4 for both concentrations of dye in dyed fabrics. The staining of the multi-fiber fabric was generally greater than 4 for both concentrations. For color fastness properties in light, dyed fabrics have the notes changed in the order of 2-3 and 3 for the concentrations 10% and 50%, respectively. In general, solidity results showed that natural dyestuff reached the acceptable notes for textile industry and the natural dyestuff obtained from waste effluent leaves of C. citriodora has a potential use as natural dyestuff in dyeing cotton.