Textiles, a basic human need has always been a hotspot for innovation. A major modern concern of producers as well as environment groups has been the fact that textile coloring processes involve dyes. The discharge processes have a damaging effect on the environment and involve consumption of large volumes of water. Furthermore, they are toxic to human health.

Acting on these concerns, Zydex is pioneering printing technologies that are free of dyes and discharge processes without compromising the feel and fastness standards typical of dyed prints.

EPRICON – PIGMENT BASED SOLUTIONS FOR REACTIVE REPLACEMENT

Reactive printing has been the mainstay of coloring fabrics due to the exceptional depth, feel and fastness properties imparted. It involves using dying agents, chromophoric molecules with reactive groups, that react permanently to the fabric. Reactive printing does not come without drawbacks though. Reactive dyes require alkaline fixation baths consuming large quantities of water yet do not fully fix resulting in generation of excess dye contaminated water and dye wastage. Further, the final color development cannot be ascertained until the fabric undergoes post processing thus essentially printing “blind”.

Pigment printing on the other hand involves fixing pigments onto the fabric using polymeric binders. The process involves preparing pigment pastes consisting of pigments, binder, thickeners and certain enhancing additives. This paste is then printed onto the fabrics and cured. There are no post processing steps and the water consumption is minimized to paste preparation and evaporated away during curing. There is no effluent stream generated unlike reactive dying.

There have been several attempts to replace reactive printing with pigment based solutions but the challenge of obtaining feel and fastness standards still remains. Zydex, through its Epricon package, has successfully overcome these hurdles in pigment printing. With wet rub and wash standards like reactive and zero hand feel, Zydex is enabling a shift for printers to move towards zero water discharge printing processes without compromising on print quality. Our rotary grade ready white inks are designed for highest opacity and hand feel standards allowing for replacement of discharge printing eliminating water usage involved.

K2 INKS – PVC-FREE WATER BASED GARMENT PRINTING INKS

Zydex is a global pioneer in the shift away from PVC Plastisol based screen printing ink towards water-based technology. With increasing environmental and health concerns around the usage of PVC and plasticizers, there was a need to shift towards more eco-friendly and non-toxic platforms which called for the usage of PVC free inks . With K2 series of water based printing ink, Zydex enables manual and machine printing with the runnability and ease of plastisol and excellent hand feel and fastness standards. Typical inks compromise between hand feel and wet rub standards. Zydex polymer technology allows maximum wet rub standards without losing the hand feel allowing deep color printing with excellent durability.