Dyeing of some Egyptian cotton varieties using agricultural wastes (peanut outer skin)

Purpose Peanut skins are an agro-waste product with no commercial value. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate peanut skin as a natural dyestuff and to determine if this natural dye could be used in the dyeing of some Egyptian cotton cultivars. Design/methodology/approach The methodology consists of several steps; dye extraction procedure from peanut skin through aqueous extraction, then dyeing optimized using simultaneous mordanting using alum. Finally, dyed cotton has been subjected to different textile laboratory tests, for example, color measurements and mechanical properties. Color-fastness was determined on Egyptian cotton fabric. The peanut skin as a source of natural dye and the dyed cotton sample were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis. Findings It was found that the natural dye extracted from peanut skin has an affinity for cotton samples and showed high dyeability with a unique color shade, good color strength and very good fastness. Originality/value The novelty of this paper is the extraction of color from the peanut's outer skin which is discarded as waste such as agro-waste of the agricultural process which can be used as a natural dye in the textile industry and applied to dyeing some Egyptian cotton fibers from different genotypes.