FIBERS AND POLYMERS, vol.8, no.1, pp.25-36, 2007 (SCI-Expanded)
This paper focuses on the stripping application of the reactive dyes using different recipes set up with different reducing agents and working parameters. We tried to develop alternative stripping methods using two kinds of thioureadioxide because of several disadvantages of sodium dithionite. The pretreated woven fabrics were dyed at 0.25 %, 1 %, 4 % owf% using five commercial reactive dyes by exhaust method. Totally, 180 specimens were dyed. Then, these specimens were stripped using alternative recipes. In these recipes, we investigated the effects of types of the reducing agents, the concentration of the reducing agents and caustic, process temperature and the presence of leveling agent on the stripping efficiency. In order to examine the efficiency of the stripping processes, we measured the colorimetric values (L*, Delta L, Delta E) of pretreated, dyed and the stripped samples using commercial spectrophotometer and international measurement method. The experimental results were statistically evaluated using analysis of variance (ANOVA) with significance level of alpha = 0.05. According to the measured and calculated spectral results, we achieved to develop alternative methods using thioureadioxide instead of sodium dithionite. In terms of ANOVA, we found out that only concentration of caustic itself did not have significant effects on the efficiency of stripping.