Natural dyes are environmentally friendly and have become important alternatives to synthetic dyes in some dyeing products. Therefore, better extraction and dyeing techniques need to be developed for the dyeing process of natural dyes. In this work, cotton fabric was dyed using turmeric extraction solution under an ultralow liquor ratio (materials to liquor ratio of 1:5) and ultrasonic-assisted conditions. Dye extraction using different dispersants and pH values has been investigated and three-factor-three–level Box–Behnken design was employed to explore the dyeing conditions. It was found that sodium dodecyl sulfate systems and ultrasonic waves can effective improve the dyeing depth under neutral condition. The K/ S value can reach 2.53 with ultrasonic power of 200 W, dyeing time of 30 min and temperature of 40℃. Scanning electron microscope images showed that the application of ultrasound did not cause obvious fiber damage. The developed technique could be used in the textile industry to make dyeing cotton fibers with natural dyes more sustainable than it is at present.

Coarse wool is a kind of goat wool that is difficult to further process in the textile industry due to its large diameter, dispersion, better strength, and less bending. Therefore, coarse wool is often discarded as waste or made into low-cost products. In this work, keratin was extracted from coarse wool by a high-efficiency method, and then, an Ag-doped keratin/PA6 composite nanofiber membrane with enhanced filtration and antibacterial performance was prepared using HCOOH as solvent and reductant. HAADF-STEM (high-angle annular dark field-scanning transmission electron microscopy) shows that AgNPs are uniformly distributed in keratin/PA6 (30/70) nanofibers. TGA (Thermogravimetric Analysis) and DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimetry) were employed to investigate the thermal stability of composite membranes with different keratin and AgNP contents. The present keratin as a dopant with polyamide-6 (PA6) was found not only to improve air filtration efficiency but also to enhance water–vapour transmission (WVT). The addition of the Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) gave a strong antibacterial activity to the composite membrane against Staphylococcus aureus (99.62%) and Escherichia coli (99.10%). Bacterial filtration efficiency (BFE) of the composite membrane against S. aureus and E. coli were up to 96.8% and 95.6%, respectively. All of the results suggested a great potential for coarse wool extraction and application in the air filtration field.

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Interfacial engineering has the potential to be a highly effective approach to over the key bottleneck for supercapacitor electrodes caused by sluggish reaction kinetics. Herein, hollow nano-flowers NiCo2O4@Nb2CTx MXene heterostructures...