Authors: Abu Naser Md. Ahsanul Haque
Aloe Vera, till now renowned for human health benefits as well as beauty products, is now proving its prospect as a substantial mordant for natural dyes.There are evidences of dyeing textile materials with natural dyes since historic ages. But some key problems are yet to be solved for their wider use. One of the difficulties is, these dyes are mostly non-substantive and need to be applied on textile materials with the help of mordants. Generally, metal salts of aluminum, iron, copper, chromium or tin are used for mordanting of the fabric to help natural dye gets attached. Potash aluminum sulphate, ferrous sulphate or green vitriol, stannous chloride is well established mordant for the purpose. Meanwhile, these synthetic mordants are not as eco-friendly as the dye is and natural dyeing of fabric hence cannot be considered as green dyeing entirely. Thats where Aloe vera can break through and offer the dyeing process to turn into fully green. aloe vera as a mordant for dyeing of turmeric powder on cotton and silk fabric. They also had tried sodium alginate as another mordant, which is also a natural source and generally used as a thickener in textile printing.
