In this study, we investigated the computer colour matching (CCM) of cotton fabrics dyed with reactive dye using the octane-assisted reverse micellar approach. The aim of this study is to evaluate the colour quality and compare the accuracy between CCM forecasting and simulated dyeing produced by conventional water-based dyeing and octane-assisted reverse micellar dyeing. First, the calibration of dyeing databases for both dyeing methods was established. Standard samples were dyed with known dye concentrations. Computer colour matching was conducted by using the colour difference formula of International Commission on Illumination (CIE) L*a*b*. Experimental results revealed that the predicted concentrations were nearly the same as the expected known concentrations for both dyeing methods. This indicates that octane-assisted reverse micellar dyeing system can achieve colour matching as good as the conventional water-based dyeing system. In addition, when comparing the colour produced by the conventional water-based dyeing system and the octane-assisted reverse micellar dyeing system, the colour difference (ΔE) is ≤1, which indicates that the reverse micellar dyeing system could be applied for industrial dyeing with CCM.
Keywords: colour matching; cotton fibre; non-ionic surfactant; octane; reactive dye; reverse micelle.