UK's Brilliant Dyes Completes Industrially Relevant Environmental Validation of Algae-Based Natural Dye Technology

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 29, Brilliant Dyes, a spin-out company from Imperial College London, presented its microalgae-based natural dye production process in a latest technology progress report. The company has scaled up microalgae cultivation to 120-liter bioreactors and developed low-energy closed-loop pigment extraction and textile fixation technologies. The technology has now reached Technology Readiness Level 5 (TRL 5) and has been validated in an industrially relevant environment. The company plans to build a pilot facility with an annual capacity of approximately 10 tonnes of dye by 2027.

Brilliant Dyes uses different species of microalgae to produce natural pigments in red, blue, and green, among other colors. The production process yields dyes of different colors by adjusting microalgae cultivation conditions, raw material pretreatment, and automated extraction processes. The company is also investigating the use of sunlight, CO2-containing industrial flue gas, and wastewater for microalgae cultivation, and exploring the use of residual biomass and nutrients remaining after pigment extraction for products such as animal feed.

In the textile fixation step, the R&D team forms functional groups on the fabric surface through pretreatment that can bind with natural pigments, controlling the fixation reaction temperature at approximately 40 degrees Celsius, which is about 30 to 100 degrees Celsius lower than conventional processes used for comparison. Different dyes and fabrics still require corresponding treatment conditions.

At the current stage, products begin to show fading after approximately 15 washes with strong detergents. The company is currently focusing on developing dyeing applications for high-end textiles made from natural fibers such as wool, cotton, and linen, while continuing to improve color fastness and production costs. The related technology is still in the pre-commercial scale-up validation phase, and the planned pilot production capacity has not yet achieved actual commercial output.