Optimization of proteases pretreatment on natural dyeing of wool using response surface methodology

Natural dyes and enzymes have attracted a lot of attention due to their non-hazardous nature. In this research, wool fabrics were pretreated with the commercial protease at different concentrations over various times. The dyeing process was then carried out on the treated fabrics with the commercial madder and cochineal. Also, the central composite design analysis was used to design the relation between dye exhaustion and some properties of dyed wool including tensile strength, alkaline solubility, water drop absorption, and weight loss based on Design of Expert software. The response surface methodology was also applied to find the optimum conditions for the wool fabric pretreatment. The scanning electron microscopy was employed to indicate the influences of proteases on the fabric surface. The optimized proteases pretreatment on the wool surfaces has considerably improved the absorption of madder and cochineal and minimized the damage to appropriate physical properties. The adsorption kinetic of madder and cochineal on enzymatic wool fiber was fitted with a pseudo-second-order model. The rate of dyeing at different temperatures, as well as the values of standard affinity, entropy, and enthalpy, was calculated. The activation energy of dyeing with madder and cochineal at different temperatures are 23.79 and 30.96 kJ/mol, respectively, considering that these values are in the typical activation energy for physisorption. It was also found that wash, light, wet and dry rub fastness properties of the samples dyed along with protease have not changed significantly. This can be easily scaled up in the industry as a simple method using the commercial materials.