Advantages And Disadvantages Of Natural Dyes

Another former dye, which is still in use, but is not a naturally occurring today, is an Indigo. It is extracted from Indigofera tinctoria fermentation and had a unique blue color (see Figure 2). It was used by the Romans as a pigment because it was chemically reduced to become water-soluble. First produced synthetically by Adolf von Baeyer in 1880, and in fact is used to color denim (Clark et al., 1993). Until the late nineteenth century natural colors, which mainly plants has been the most important were the dyes used in the textile dyeing procedures. The main disadvantages of the use of natural dyes are necessary in a number of stages in the process of dyeing, the diversity of sources and procedures relating to the application, rapidly changing trends and demand for good properties of different substrates, the strength of which require extensive database describing potential applications (Bechtold et al., 2003). The groundbreaking synthesis of mauveine by W. H. Perkins started the era of synthetic dyes in which the chemical and physical properties of more modern standards, better quality and more reproducible use of the techniques. It has also allowed the development and expansion of the use of certain products. For example, the development of synthetic fibers such as polyester and cellulose triacetate would be difficult without the design and synthesis of appropriate characteristics of dyes. Since then thousands of dyes have been synthesized and dye production has become