It’s estimated that between 80 and 100 billion new clothing garments are produced globally every year. To produce those billions of garments, textile dyeing and finishing are used to transform raw fibers into fabrics with the desired appearance, texture and wear resistance. Dyeing gives color to plain fibers and finishing improves the look, feel and performance of dyed fabrics.

The problem is that textile dyeing and finishing processes have some of the most significant environmental impact of any manufacturing processes on the planet. They are responsible for more than 3% of global CO2 emissions and approximately 20% of global water pollution.

Traditional fashion production chemistries and processes are energy intensive for heating and drying. They use excess water for the pre-rinsing processes, the baths of dye that are required to saturate textiles with their desired color, and post-dye rinsing. It’s estimated that as much as 200 tons of water are used for every ton of textiles produced, with most of this water returning as effluent to local waterways filled with residual dyes, hazardous chemicals, microfibers and mordants (chemicals used to bond dyes with fabric).

Going Digital for Sustainability

Digital textile printing offers the opportunity to dramatically reduce water and energy consumption while enabling faster turnaround with on-demand dyeing capabilities. Within the digital world, there are multiple digital textile inks that can be used, each with their own sustainability benefits. These include disperse ink, reactive ink, acid ink and pigment ink.

The following chart highlights how pigment printing is a far simpler process with less energy and water consumption compared to reactive and acid dyes, which are the more traditional technologies.

Digital textile printing with pigments is essentially a waterless system, offering the most sustainability benefits by reducing energy, water usage and pollution. The pigment ink is printed directly to the fabric, with only minimal drying to fix the ink in place. There is no washing, steaming or finishing required. This technology has the ability to transform the textile industry, especially in global regions where water is becoming a more finite resource and in areas where there are more restrictive pollution and wastewater regulations.

Lubrizol’s Proprietary Pigment Technology

Pigment ink offers exceptional sustainability benefits, but it has to perform in real-world applications by providing ink stability under high-speed printing, print performance and color fastness properties in a wide range of end applications. A key component of the ink formulation are highly stable pigment dispersions, which enable high-speed, uninterrupted inkjet printing.

Conventional dispersions that are based on standard polymeric dispersants can become de-anchored from the pigment surface over time, which leads to re-agglomeration. Lubrizol HSD dispersion technology uses reactive irreversible anchoring technology to adhere the dispersant to the pigment surface to keep re-agglomeration from occurring. This irreversible dispersant anchoring technology provides strong electro-steric repulsion that maintains stability and resists sheer forces when used in high-speed textile applications.

Lubrizol HSD technology—which is marketed under the Diamond Dispersions™ brand name—improves ink open time by creating a bigger region of stability. Diamond Dispersions™ HSD Technology creates a dispersion that is more stable to changes in solvent polarity and enables more formulating flexibility in the ink formulation. Diamond HSD dispersions allow for more reliable inkjet printing by eliminating jetting problems and blocked nozzles for faster print speeds and less down time.

Lubrizol also offers binders and pre-treatment formulations for direct-to-textile digital printing using pigment inks that complement HSD dispersions. As a binder to adhere the pigment to the fabric, Lubrijet™ T805 is an anionically stabilised polyurethane dispersion suitable for the formulation of water-based pigmented inkjet inks. It was specifically designed for commercial textile inkjet printing applications to provide a protective layer to enhance the durability of the printed image with regard to scratch, rub and wash resistance.

For pre-treatment, PrintRite™ DP316 has been engineered to provide a high-quality digital print image with vivid colors and excellent wash durability while maintaining the original soft hand feel and stretchability of the textile fabric. It enables direct-to-textile digital printing with water-based pigment inkjet inks without excessive post processing.

As a global specialty chemical company, Lubrizol offers effective solutions to enhance textile performance while also greatly improving sustainability through the use of pigment inks. Lubrizol technology helps enable environmental friendlier processes that require significantly less water, energy and processing time in fashion, accessories, sportswear, home décor, outdoor and more.

Pigment Inks Make Sustainability a Reality in Digital Textile Printing