Preface

Chapter 7 **Decolorization of Dyeing Wastewater Using Polymeric**

Chapter 8 **Textile Dyeing: Environmental Friendly Osage Orange Extract**

Chapter 9 **Physichochemical and Low Stress Mechanical Properties of Silk**

Styliani Kalantzi, Diomi Mamma and Dimitris Kekos

**Fabrics Degummed by Enzymes 233**

George Z. Kyzas, Margaritis Kostoglou, Nikolaos K. Lazaridis and

**Absorbents - An Overview 177**

Dimitrios N. Bikiaris

**VI** Contents

Heba Mansour

**on Protein Fabrics 207**

Initially the sole purpose of dyeing was to color textile substrates for fancy fabric appearan‐ ces. Although, this was an impressive achievement at the time, the competitive challenges began to drive the development of highly functional fibers and substrates through advanced dyeing and finishing processes for higher added value in applications of; membrane filtra‐ tion, coatings, composites, microelectronic devices, thin-film technology, super absorbency, antimicrobial materials, biocides and insecticides, flame reterdancy, improved reactivity and numerous others.

Polymeric fibers that are mechanically strong, chemically stable, and easy to process often have inert surfaces which makes them not suitable for these advanced applications. Conse‐ quently, there has been significant number of studies that focuses on enhancing the chemi‐ cal, biological, physical, optical and dyeability properties of fibers without negatively effect‐ ing their mechanical and most desired properties. Among the techniques, perhaps the plas‐ ma treatment is one of the most investigated. Also, Cyclodextrins which can act as hosts and form inclusion compounds with various small molecules to provide certain desired attrib‐ utes may be applied to textile substrates as reagent during the finishing processes. The ma‐ jority of these studies often involve a) the embedding of novel nanoparticles for adding unique features to textiles, b) uniformly maximizing the loading capacity of textile sub‐ strates to improve nanoparticle adsorption for optimal surface property.

While for the purpose of coloration only natural dyes were used initially. Due to limitations in coloration and with the invent of synthetic fibers, natural dyes are mostly replaced with dyes themselves are either chemically hazardous or require auxiliary chemicals that are not good for the environment. At the beginning, we were not as concerned of the damage caused by dyeing to the environment. However over time as we come to understand that our being healthy and well being also depends on our environment, we have been increas‐ ingly paying attention to reduce our footprint on our ecosystem. In particular for dyeing of textiles, the efforts primarily focuses on reducing the water consumption, using of natural dyes or less harmful dyes and chemicals, right-first-time dyeing, the development of an ef‐ fective degumming process based on enzymes as active agents , dyeing and energy optimi‐ zation and development of advanced waste water treatment processes. In recent years, many attempts have also been made to improve various aspects of dyeing by the introduc‐ tion and advancement of new technologies that used ultrasound, ultraviolet, ozone, plasma, microwave, gamma irradiation, laser, supercritical carbondioxide.

Consequently, as market forces demand unique and sophisticated products from the textile industry, recent research has been focused on the development of technologies for function‐ al textiles some of which implemented advanced finishing and dyeing techniques. Mean‐ time, the local governments and regulators also require the textile industry to become more environment friendly in their operations. Hence, this book aims to present the cutting edge research in both areas to advance the knowledge in this field.

> **Dr. Melih Günay** HueMetrix Inc. NC, USA

**Section 1**

**Advances in Dyeing Chemistry and Processes**

**Advances in Dyeing Chemistry and Processes**

Consequently, as market forces demand unique and sophisticated products from the textile industry, recent research has been focused on the development of technologies for function‐ al textiles some of which implemented advanced finishing and dyeing techniques. Mean‐ time, the local governments and regulators also require the textile industry to become more environment friendly in their operations. Hence, this book aims to present the cutting edge

**Dr. Melih Günay**

HueMetrix Inc. NC, USA

research in both areas to advance the knowledge in this field.

VIII Preface

**Chapter 1**

**Multifunctional Textiles – Modification by Plasma,**

The textile industry in developed countries is confronting the world's marketing conditions and competitive challenges which are driving towards the development of advanced, highly functional textiles and textiles with higher added value. The conventional textile finishing techniques are wet chemical modifications where water and rather hazardous chemicals are used in large quantities and wastewaters need to be processed before discharging effluent, whereas the most problematic factor are ecological impacts to the environment and effects to human health. The increasing environmental concerns and demands for an environmentally friendly processing of textiles leads to the development of new technologies, the use of plas‐ ma being one of the suitable methods [1]. Plasma technology is an environmentally friendly technology and a step towards creating solid surfaces with new and improved properties that cannot be achieved by conventional processes [2]. Plasma is the fourth state of matter. It is a gas with a certain portion of ionized as well as other reactive particles, e.g. ions, elec‐ trons, photons, radicals and metastable excited particles. Several types of plasma are known; however, only non-equilibrium or cold plasma is used for the modification of physical and chemical properties of solid materials such as textiles. Chemically reactive particles pro‐ duced at a low gas temperature are a unique property of cold plasma; hence, there is mini‐ mal thermal degradation of a textile substrate during the plasma processing [3]. Cold plasma is a partially ionized gas with the main characteristic of a very high temperature of free electrons (typically of the order of 10,000 K, often about 50,000 K) and a low kinetic tem‐ perature of all other species. The average energy of the excited molecules is usually far from the values calculated from the thermal equilibrium at room temperature. The rotational tem‐ perature, for instance, is often close to 1000 K, while the vibrational temperature can be as

> © 2013 Gorjanc et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Gorjanc et al.; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Dyeing and Nanoparticles**

Miran Mozetič

**1. Introduction**

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/53376

Marija Gorjanc, Marija Gorenšek, Petar Jovančić and

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter
