Ecological and cleaner process for dyeing bicomponent polyester filaments (PET/PTT) using ecological carriers: analysis of dyeing performance

Thanks to their excellent properties, bicomponent filaments, in particular, polyethylene terephthalate (PET)/polytrimethylene terephthalate (PTT) are more and more used in stretchable clothing. Despite the researchers' efforts, the dyeing of these filaments still presents several problems which should be resolved. Manufacturers must choose between dyeing polyester under pressure at high temperatures (close to 130 °C) to have less toxic and cheaper textile effluents and/or dyeing at low temperatures (not exceeding 100 °C) which needs the use of toxic carriers. This paper presents a new opportunity and the feasibility of dyeing bicomponent polyester filaments using an economic and clean process at a temperature equal to 100 °C and by replacing toxic carriers by ecological ones. Three kinds of ecological carriers, namely o-Vanillin, p-Vanillin and Coumarin, are used to improve the dyeing performance of bicomponent filaments with three disperse dyes having different molecular weights. They were compared to three conventional ones largely used in industry. The effect of each carrier on dyeing performance (dye bath exhaustion, color strength and CIELab coordinates) was then investigated. The obtained results prove that ecofriendly carriers constitute a good solution to replace the toxic ones and allow to obtain the same, or even better dyeing performance and fastness properties.