COLOR STRENGTH ESTIMATION OF COIR FIBERS BLEACHED WITH PERACETIC ACID

Abstract

The production rates of textile materials increase day by day due to the increasing population of the world. This rapid increase in production boosts the demand of raw materials to be used in textile manufacturing. The insufficiency of necessary natural fiber supply leads to new investigations of other natural fiber alternatives since the use of sustainable and inexpensive natural fibers presents an opportunity to protect the environment. Coir fiber obtained from the husk of ripe/matured coconut has various fields of use such as door mats, floor mats, brushes, matresses, upholstery padding, sacking and horticulture. In this study, in order to determine the optimum bleaching conditions for coir fiber, a wide variety of peracetic acid concentrations are applied at different bleaching processing times. Color strength values of bleached coir fiber fabrics vary under different conditions. This study aims to obtain the estimation of color strength values on the samples of coir fibers bleached with peracetic acid. In order to solve the problem, various mathematical function models are utilized. Then, an artificial bee colony algorithm is used to optimize the weights of the functions. Sample data of the fiber is used to verify the correctness of the color strength estimation model. The estimated results are compared with the results of experimental studies. Results show that the prediction model can fit the experimental results with a high precision. The model based on artificial bee colony is a good candidate to estimate the color strength of bleached coir fiber fabric.

Keywords

• Coconut fruit
• Coir fibers
• color strength estimation
• swarm intelligence
• artificial bee colony