Research into various aspects of indigo dyeing have been going on for a long time... till your discovery came. What do you think has been wrong with things all this while? Were people looking for solutions in the wrong area?
The currently used technology has been polished and demonstrated success for commercial production. Environmental aspects have been less important for a long period of time until now.
The next question follows. How did you have your eureka moment? In the sense that you wanted to pursue this nanocellulose idea? Were you sure it would work, when the project started?
One of the nanocellulose fabrication methods was studied at the Textile Department at UGA. When I joined the Department in 2014, this material attracted my attention and interest. The Department faculty, students, and I began to explore the properties of nanocellulose for environment-friendly textile dyeing technologies.
How long did the project take? Tell us more about it, and also your team.
We began this research with my colleagues professors Suraj Sharma, Ian Hardin (both in UGA) and Igor Luzinov (Clemson University), a post-doc Yunsang Kim and graduate students, Alex Zakharchenko, and Raha Saremi. At that time, we developed reactive dyeing of fabric using nanocellulose. This project was supported by Walmart Foundation. Yunsang presented the results at the Green Chemistry Conference in Spring 2016 in Berlin, Germany, and won the First Prize in the Elsevier contest to continue this research. After completing this project, Suraj Sharma and I decided to continue and apply nanocellulose for indigo dyeing technology. A graduate student Smriti Rai made an essential contribution to the developments at this stage.
For anything to have an impact on the world, what works in a lab needs to be scaleable, in this case mass production. Will we be seeing that any time soon?
The same arguments as for the developments of R&D interests. There is a competition between two paradigms: a safe environment for future generations and profit at any costs. A safe environment costs more than a fossil-based economy. I hope that a reasonable solution will be found and the support of environmentally-sound technologies will receive broad support from society.
Tell us about your personal denim history. As a scientist, where do you think denim tech (including indigo dyeing) is headed in the near future?
Denim fabric has been a successful commercial project for decades. For many nations, the demi garments became a daily “must be”. However, any forecast in clothes trends is not a productive use of time. We live in a very dynamic world also in terms of new technologies and in terms of consumer preferences as well. We are never sure what is coming… But, I am sure we will continue to see denim products coloured with indigo in the near future.
