A review of progress in the ecological application of ionic liquids in textile processes

Currently, problems related to environmental compliance are meeting growing echo in public opinion. This increase in awareness forces manufacturing companies to incorporate the concept of sustainable development into their processes. The textile industry, in turn, attempts to reduce its environmental impact by creating, designing and developing innovative industrial processes, more concerned with ecology, but still ensuring high yields and adapting quickly to fashion trends. In this context, one of the leading textile engineering research axes concerns the substitution of various textile wet processes often expensive in terms of energy, water, chemicals and auxiliaries consumptions, degradation of textile materials and/or wastewater treatment by new cleaner processes using green solvents. One of the various strategies envisaged is the application of ionic liquids. Recently, it has been proved that these emergent solvents could be successfully used in some important textile processes. This led not only to eliminate certain ecological and technical drawbacks of some textile wet processes, but also to create innovative textiles with valuable properties. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of ionic liquids with particular emphasis on their ecological and industrial potentials. The state of the art of the main researches applied in textile processes using these green solvents was then assessed and discussed. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.