Combined UV-Vis-Absorbance and Reflectance Spectroscopy Study of Dye Transfer Kinetics in Aqueous Mixtures of Surfactants
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Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Combined UV-Vis-absorbance and Reflectance Spectroscopy Study of Dye Transfer Kinetics in Aqueous Mixtures of Surfactants Carlos G. Lopez · Anna Manova · Corinna Hoppe · Michael Dreja · Peter Schmiedel · Mareile Job · Walter Richtering · Alexander B¨oker · Larisa Tsarkova Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract We report an analytical approach to study the kinetics of desorp- tion and exhaustion of a hydrophobic dye in a multicomponent washing-model environment. The process of dye transfer between an acceptor textile (white polyamide), detergent micelles and a donor textile (red polyester) was quan- tified by a combination of colorimetric analyses. UV-Vis absorbance and UV- reflectance spectroscopy were used to follow the concentration of the solubilised dye in the micelles and the amount of dyer transferred to the acceptor textile, respectively, as a function of time. Up to ' 10 min of the washing process, the released dye is predominantly solubilised in surfactant micelles. At later times, the adsorption of the dye on the hydrophobic surface of the acceptor textile is energetically favoured. The shift of the desorption equilibrium in the presence of the acceptor textile results in ' 30% increase in the release of the dye. The reported methodology provides insight into the competition between solubili- sation of hydrophobic molecules by amphiphiles and dye adsorption on solid substrates, important for designing novel concepts of dye transfer inhibition. Carlos G. Lopez · Anna Manova · Corinna Hoppe · Walter Richtering Institute of Physical Chemistry, RWTH Aachen University, Landoltweg 2, 52056 Aachen, Germany Anna Manova DWI-Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials, Forckenbeckstrasse 50, 52056 Aachen. Michael Dreja · Peter Schmiedel · Mareile Job Henkel AG & Co. KGaA Henkelstrasse 67, D-40191, D¨usseldorf,Germany Alexander B¨oker Fraunhofer-Institut f¨urAngewandte Polymerforschung, Lehrstuhl f¨urPolymermaterialien und Polymertechnologie, Universit¨atPotsdam, Geiselbergstraße 69, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany Larisa Tsarkova Faculty of Chemistry, Chair of Colloid Chemistry, Moscow State University, 119991,Moscow 1, GSP-1, 1-3 Leninskiye Gory, Russia. E-mail: [email protected] 2 Carlos G. Lopez et al. Keywords Dye transfer kinetics · Disperse dyes · Surfactants · Detergent · Colorimetric analysis · Laundry · Dye Transfer Inhibition 1 Introduction Dye transfer between textiles during the washing is a complex and generally undesirable process [1{3]. Different strategies exist to inhibit dye transfer, for example by use of dye bleachers or catchers [1, 2, 4]. Whatever the approach used for dye transfer inhibition, it is necessary to understand the relevant timescales for dye migration [5] which include desorption from the donor tex- tiles, solubilisation into the washing medium (containing solubilisation agents such as surfactants) and adsorption onto the acceptor textile. Disperse dyes are non-ionic, organic, colouring compounds with low solu- bility in water, which are used for the dyeing of hydrophobic fibres such as cellulose ester, cellulose acetate, Nylon and polyester fibres. Owing to their limited solubility in water, disperse dyes are used along with auxiliary dis- persing agents, typically surfactants and polymers, to stabilise their aqueous dispersion during the dyeing process. [6{18]. The kinetics of dye adsorption onto a number of fibre types, in particular polyester [19,20], have been the subject of experimental [21{27] and theoreti- cal [28{39] studies. The rate of dyeing of polyester is limited by the diffusion of dye molecules into the textile fibres [28,33,40]. Dyeing kinetics can be mod- elled from first principles, following solutions for the diffusion equation under different conditions [31,35], or according to a range of empirical equations [38]. Desorption kinetics of disperse dyes from textile fibres remains less studied [41,42] than the process of dyeing, despite a direct relevance of the former for dye transfer [5]. Fastness is the ability of textiles to withstand colour reduction during treat- ment with surfactant-containing alkaline water solutions. Systematic stud- ies on the staining of undyed materials in contact with coloured specimens are valuable for understanding of equilibrium and kinetic reactions involving poorly water-soluble organic compounds. Given that washing is performed at temperatures much lower than the temperature of the dyeing process, it is unlikely that during the limited time of a washing cycle (' 2hrs) an equilibrium between the dye concentration inside and outside the fibre will be reached [10]. It is then reasonable to assume that dye release during washing tests proceeds dominantly from the outer fibre surface, which contains a higher concentration of dye as compared to the bulk of the fibres (see references [32] and [36] and references therein). Therefore, dye diffusion through the fibre’s densely packed crystalline structure can be neglected in considerations of the release kinetics. The role of surfactants in coloration of textiles with disperse dyes is an area of active research due to its industrial relevance both in textile and in laundry technologies. Choi et al studied the dyeing of polyamide and polyester fibres in the presence and absence of surfactants [6, 7]. The addition of sur- Title Suppressed Due to Excessive Length 3 factants to the dyeing solution resulted in a decrease in the dyeing rate and in the final dyeing value due to solubilisation and stabilisation of molecularly dissolved dyes in solution. Qualitatively similar behaviour was observed for dif- ferent surfactants, but the magnitude of change with respect to the surfactant free case was dependent on the type of surfactant used. Regarding laundry applications, surfactants and polymers (commonly present in detergents) are envisaged to play a role in promoting or inhibiting dye transfer to undyed materials (acceptors) [1, 6, 43{45]. Standard tests on dye transfer are based on the analysis of the colorimetric data of acceptor samples, since the loss of the colour intensity of the coloured fibres after a standard washing treatment is undetectable. Quantitative spec- troscopic analysis of aqueous solutions, as a media for dye transfer, is generally not feasible due to extremely low solubility of the hydrophobic dyes in water. Here we report an analytical approach which combines UV-Vis absorbance and -reflectance spectroscopy in order to follow the concentration of the des- orbed dye in solution and on the acceptor textile with time. We considered two sources of the molecularly dissolved dye in solution: (i) a technical coloration powder and (ii) a donor textile. These two sources of the dye have been ana- lyzed in a system containing a fixed mass of acceptor textile which shifts the dissolution equilibrium by constantly removing the molecular-dissolved dye from the solution. The mass of dye in solution and absorbed onto the acceptor textile are quantified by UV-Vis and UV-reflectance respectively. The goal of the present study is to correlate within the same experimental system the kinetics of the dye desorption from a donor polyester (PES) textile and the kinetics of the dye transfer onto hydrophobic acceptor polyamide (PA) textile in an aqueous detergent liquor. In particular, we resolved the competi- tion between the solubilisation of dye within micelles and dye adsorption onto the hydrophobic fabric. The analytical protocols reported here are applica- ble to other types of dispersed dyes, as well as other types of fibres, as long as the solubilisation of the respective coloration powder in aqueous media is achievable with the aid of auxiliary dispersing additives. 2 Background Theory Here we outline some basic theoretical considerations that help us describe and quantify the rate of dyeing of acceptor textiles. During a typical dyeing experiment, textile fibres are immersed in a dye bath containing an initial concentration of dye C(0). In the absence of solubilising agents such as sur- factants, disperse dyes will be suspended as large particles, with only a small fraction being molecularly dissolved. The dyeing of the textile occurs through this latter fraction and not through the particles, which act only as a reser- voir [33,46]. Under strong stirring (also referred to as strong flow), the rate of dyeing is limited by the diffusion of dye molecules into the textile fibres. The fraction of dye adsorbed onto the textile at an given time is called the exhaus- tion E(t). For dyebaths with low concentrations of dye, the concentration of 4 Carlos G. Lopez et al. dye in the fibre at equilibrium (F1) follows a Nernst type relation F1 / C1 where C1 is the equilibrium concentration of dye in the bath [33]. The full solutions to the diffusion equation for a cylinder or slab of ab- sorbing material [31] are complex. It is therefore advantageous to use limiting forms which can easily be fit to experimental data [47, 48]. Since our experi- ments are carried out under constant stirring, we focus on the case of `strong flow', modelled by Crank for different geometries of the absorbing material. Equation 1 models the absorption of solute by a slab of material for finite bath under such strong flow conditions [31] (see reference [33] for a discussion of its application to experimental data for the dyeing of polyester fibres): βt/α2 2 1=2 M(t) = M1(1 + α)[1 − e erfc(βt/α ) ] (1) where M(t) and M1 are the mass of dye in the fibre at time t and at equilib- rium respectively, 1=(1 + α) is the fraction of dye inside the textile at equilib- rium and β = D=l2 where D is the diffusion coefficient of the dye inside the 2 R x −z2 fibre and l is the thickness of the textile sheet. erfc(x) = 1 − π1=2 0 e dz is the complementary error function. For high values of α and low values of t, equation 1 can be expanded as: 2 M(t)=M = (βt)1=2 (2) 1 π1=2 For a cylindrical instead of a slab geometry, l becomes the fibre diameter and the prefactor in equation 2 increased by a factor of 2.