Cationization of cotton for industrial scale salt-free reactive dyeing of garments

Reactive dyeing of cotton garments involves two stages, namely exhaustion and fixation of dyes. The exhaustion stage in reactive dyeing requires high quantity of salt. After dyeing process, the highly saline coloured effluent is discharged and the treatment of this effluent at present is not economically viable and making industries look for other alternatives for usage of salt. Cationization of cotton is one of the effective alternatives to overcome the usage of the salt. The present work focuses on the exhaust method of cationization of garments at an industrial scale using 3-chloro-2-hydroxypropyl trimethylammonium chloride as a cationic agent. Two commercially popular reactive dyes namely Navy Blue and Green dyes were chosen for dyeing the garments at 10% shade. The results of dyeing were evaluated on the basis of colour strength, dyeing levelness and colour fastness. The uniformity of dye on the fabrics was evaluated based on dyeing levelness and was found to be good for cationized cotton dyed garments. The fastness properties of dyed fabrics to washing and light were good. The dye utilization in the cationized cotton dyed garments was twice as that of the conventionally dyed cotton garments. The environmental hazard posed by the highly saline coloured effluent could be easily mitigated by the salt-free reactive dyeing process.