A significant approach to dye cotton in supercritical carbon dioxide with fluorotriazine reactive dyes

A series of fluorotriazine reactive dyes have been synthesized and applied to dye cotton in supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO₂) with good dyeing results. The pieces of cotton to be dyed were previously presoaked in a protic solvent and cosolvents were applied during dyeing. The colour strength of the dyeings was evaluated by K/S measurements. The K/S values achieved on cotton dyed were up to 35.8 ± 4.2. Even after the cotton was subjected to a Shoxlet extraction at 358 K for 1 h, a maximum K/S value of 20.2 ± 1.8 was measured. The percentage of dye molecules chemically fixed to the cotton was on average 85%. The excellent reactivity of fluorotriazines allowed a reduction of 3 h on the dyeing time. It is noticeable that a dye concentration of 10% on weight of the fibre (owf) can be applied to dye cotton with fluorotriazines, since no damage of the cotton fibres occurred, as observed for the chlorotriazines at this high dye concentration. Dyes with fluorotriazine as reactive group were found to be the most preferable dyes for dyeing cotton in scCO₂, as they were able to exceed the limitation of the reaction with the cotton.