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

尽管颜色占消费者购买决定的80%，但纺织行业使用的着色剂99%以上仍然来自化石燃料，更不用说工业合成染色过程中涉及的有害化学物质、致癌物质和重金属。我们知道颜色很重要，所以我们想向微生物寻求帮助。通过使用自然产生着色化合物的微生物，如b-胡萝卜素、紫素、虾青素等，我们可以通过减少用水量、化石燃料依赖和废水污染来减轻着色工业的环境负担。与天然植物色素相比，微生物色素也具有巨大的优势，例如在低成本培养基中快速生长，相对容易加工，不受天气条件的影响，维护成本相对较低，效率较高。该项目是一项性能量化研究，旨在提高微生物着色剂用于纺织品的颜色/整理的技术性能。目前的挑战是，微生物染料还没有像合成染料一样高性能。有了这笔资金，我们将获得先进的量化机制和专家材料测试学者和技术人员，我们计划系统地测量、比较和优化现有配方，使其达到商业标准，并在项目结束时确定相关的市场结果。

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.