Detailed Study on Octane-Assisted Reverse Micellar Dyeing of Cotton with Reactive Dyes

Dyeing textile products has been regarded as a significant consumer of water and producer of
effluents and the addition of large amounts of salts is required in water-based reactive dye dyeing
processes. In this study, we investigated the computer colour matching (CCM) of cotton fabrics dyed
with reactive dye using the octane-assisted reverse micellar approach. The aim of this study is to
evaluate the colour quality and compare the accuracy between CCM forecasting and simulated
dyeing produced by conventional water-based dyeing and octane-assisted reverse micellar dyeing.
First, the calibration of dyeing databases for both dyeing methods was established. Standard samples
were dyed with known dye concentrations. Computer colour matching was conducted by using the
colour difference formula of CIE L*a*b*. Experimental results revealed that the predicted
concentrations were nearly the same as the expected known concentrations for both dyeing methods.
The results showed that CCM was not only applicable in the conventional water-based dyeing system,
but also in the non-aqueous octane-assisted reverse micellar dyeing system. This indicates that
octane-assisted reverse micellar dyeing system can achieve colour matching as good as the
conventional water-based dyeing system. In addition, when comparing the colour produced by the
conventional water-based dyeing system and the octane-assisted reverse micellar dyeing system, the
colour difference (ΔE) is ≤1, which indicates that the reverse micellar dyeing system could be applied
for industrial dyeing with CCM.