Cationized Cotton: Opportunities and Challenges

Dyeing cotton with fiber reactive dyes provides textiles with outstanding colorfastness properties at the expense of environmental concerns from unfixed dye and high salt content in dye house effluent. One approach to this problem is to incorporate cationic dye sites into the cotton fiber to attract the anionic fiber reactive dye molecules, thus allowing cotton dyeing without salt and with higher color yields. Although cationization of cotton for enhanced dyeability has been known for some time, it has not yet made a major impact on the textile industry. A review of the research on the cationization and subsequent dyeing of cotton will be presented with a focus on the advantages of the process and will include a discussion of, and suggested solutions to, problems that may occur during commercialization.