A novel plant for fabric rope dyeing in supercritical carbon dioxide and its cleaner production

Textile dyeing in supercritical carbon dioxide fluid possesses various essential advantages due to water free and no any effluents discharged into environment, etc. In this work, a novel plant in pilot scale was successfully designed and constructed at the first time for fabric rope dyeing with supercritical carbon dioxide fluid for cleaner production of textiles. The employed subsystems and main apparatus of the pilot scale plant, as well as the application procedures and processes for fabric rope dyeing with water free were described. Moreover, primary experiments were carried out for confirming the possibility of fabric rope dyeing in the designed plant with supercritical carbon dioxide fluid. The rope dyeing results show that satisfactory and commercially acceptant products with good color uniformity, wet-wash fastness and rub fastness rated at 4 to 5 were obtained in the pilot scale plant with supercritical carbon dioxide fluid. Moreover, an improvement of color fastness at half or one grade for a deeper shade was observed by employing a rinse procedure after a dyeing step. In comparison with conventional dyeing processes, the plant and application process for fabric rope dyeing were more environmentally friendly and cleaner production of industrial textiles with water and effluents free, as well as energy conservation. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.