EFFECT OF BLEND RATIO ON DYE UPTAKE OF DIFFERENT BLENDS OF FLAX/COTTON WOVEN FABRICS

Sule, A.T.¹, Lawal, A.S.² and Giwa, A.²

 ¹Department of Textile Technology and Fashion, Kano State Polytechnic, Kano-Nigeria

 ²Department of Textile Science and Technology, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria-Nigeria

E-mail: amirgetso@yahoo.com

Abstract: In the textile industries Wool/Cotton blend is no doubt the oldest fibre combination of all, however, the wool is not readily available and is very expensive. In the long run it is anticipated that Flax/Cotton blend will address the raw material crisis in wool/cotton blend. Since flax and cotton have similar physical and chemical properties, chemical processing and dyeing of the blend may pose less problems. Furthermore cost of production will be reduced. Four different blends of flax/cotton woven fabrics (10/90, 30/70, 50/50 and 70/30) and 100% cotton woven fabric for control and comparison, were desized scoured, bleached and mercerized using normal methods for pretreatment of cotton fibre. The five samples were dyed with Solophenyl Brown direct dye and dye uptake and related dyeing kinetics measurements were done based on visible light colourimetry using a UV- Visible spectrophotometer. The highest percentage dye exhaustion was recorded by Sample D (50/50 F/C) at 80^OC. Also the flax/cotton blends exhibit maximum diffusion coefficient at a lower temperature (80^OC) than that of the control (90^OC). Generally, the diffusion coefficient was found to increase with increasing flax content in the blend while the reverse is the case with activation energy.