Product Development to Improve Environmental Performance in Household Textile Processing

摘要

The cleaner technology (CT) concept was applied to the household silk dyeing process, to develop a more environmentally friendly silk product. A selected CT technique, dye reduction, was experimented in an observed household industry's dyeing process in Chaiyaphum province, based in the Northeast of Thailand. Wastewater characteristics, production expenses, and product quality and elegance were investigated to demonstrate that the introduced CT technique was appropriated for silk producers in the studied area. The studied amounts of dye used to color 1 kg of raw silk were 60 g (generally used in the household dyeing process in Northeastern Thailand), 45 g (25% reduction), and 30 g (50% reduction). Five favorite dye colors in the local/regional silk fabric market, i.e. rose pink, lime green, goldenrod, summer sky and lavender, were selected for the study. All the colors were from a silk dye brand which was broadly used in the studied area. Greater than developing a more environmentally friendly silk fabric, product development by raw material (dye) reduction regarding the CT concept also improved the production efficiency as well as the product quality. The results have shown that reducing the amount of dye used by 25-50% could reduce the chemical oxygen demand (COD) contents in wastewater by 20-40%, and also could reduce the production expenses, mainly for dye and water costs, by 15-30%. The fabric quality test has revealed that reducing dye could improve the color fastness of silk fabric. However, it was found that only the 25% reduction seemed to be able to give acceptable differences of all studied dye colors, except the lime green color.