Sustainably dyed and functionalized biobased poly (lactic acid) fibers for textile applications: an in-depth investigation on the effect of multifunctional colorants on the properties of PLA

Textile and clothing industry are one of the largest consumers of plastics. Synthetic or man-made fibers make up about 70% of the material used in the textile industry, with production reaching 80.9 million tons in 2020 and expected to grow even more in the coming years with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) being the primary player accounting for 48 million tons. Furthermore, the textiles are dyed conventionally dyed using exhaust dyeing process, which leads to effluents contaminating water resources. To overcome these shortcomings, this thesis aims to use a biobased polymer, polylactic acid (PLA), in dope dyeing process to develop intrinsically coloured textiles for applications such as clothing, and masks. Two different processing techniques have been employed to develop demonstrators and to test their performance. In addition to using colorants just for dyeing, they have been also used to incorporate anti-bacterial functionality to developed materials.