Ecological Dyeing of Protein Fabrics with Carica papaya L. Leaf Natural Extract in the Presence of Bio-mordants as an Alternative Copartner to Metal Mordants

In the present study, an attempt has been made to investigate the possibility of protein fabric ecological dyeing with Carica papaya L. leaf dry powder extract as a natural dye. The effect of various metal salts (ferrous sulfate, alum and copper chloride) and natural tannin extracts (harda powder, pomegranate peel, orange peel and amla powder) as mordants on color and fastness properties of dyed protein fabric samples was comparatively observed. Dyeing experiments were performed with and without mordants, using all mordanting techniques, i.e., pre-mordanting, meta-mordanting and post-mordanting. The results of using bio-mordants for wool dyeing were comparable with that of the metallic mordants in terms of color strength and fastness characteristics. Bio-mordants produced quite different colors as expected from a mordant and thus offer full potential to replace metal salts in wool dyeing for ecological dyeing of textiles. UV spectra, FTIR, anti-microbial and UPF values were also evaluated. It was found that dye extract and dyed samples have very good anti-microbial behavior. The bacterial colony counting reduction (%) for both S. aureus and E. coli bacteria was found to be more than 90% for all the dyed fabrics. Dyed fabrics, especially wool, exhibited very large enhancement in UV protection. For wool, the UPF value increased from 79 for undyed wool to 704 after dyeing. In other fabrics, the UPF improvement was not very high owing to the low thickness and cover factor. Thus, dyeing with Carica papaya L. leaf dry powder extract can be a good alternative for medical textiles.