Performance Quantification/Enhancement Study: Microbial Colouration & Finishing for Textiles?

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Even though colours make up 80% of the buying decision for consumers, more than 99% of the colourants employed in the textile industry still derive from fossil fuels, not to mention the hazardous chemicals, carcinogens & heavy metals involved in the industrial synthetic dyeing process.\r\rWe know colours are important, so we would like to turn to microbes for help.\r\rBy employing microorganisms that naturally produce colouring compounds like b-carotene, violacein, astaxanthin, etc., we can alleviate the environmental burden of the colour industry by reducing water consumption, fossil fuel reliance and effluent pollution. Microbial colours also have enormous advantages over natural plant-based pigments, e.g. rapid growth in low-cost medium, relatively easy to process, independent of weather conditions, and relatively low-maintenance and high efficiency.\r\rThis project is a performance quantification study to enhance the technical properties of colours/finishes created from microbial colourants for textile-based applications. The current challenge is that microbial dyes are yet as high-performance as synthetic dyes. With the funding to access advanced quantification mechanisms and expert material testing academics & technicians, we plan to systematically measure, compare & optimise the existing formulae up to commercial standards and identify relevant marketable outcomes at the end of the project.