HERZOGENAURACH – Sportswear giant Adidas has launched a range of t-shirts which, dyed in a process using pressurised CO2 instead of water, is said to use 50% less energy, and 50% fewer chemicals than normal processes.

The creation of DryDye saw Adidas partner with Thailand-based technical fabric and garment manufacturer Yeh Group to support the development of the technology, which produced the fabric for the sportswear brand.

So far, it has produced some 50,000 DryDye T-shirts, launched to coincide with the Olympic Games, which Adidas says has saved over 1.2 million litres of water. This includes DryDye T-shirts for men, women and children in four designs, although it is likely to be used for more garments over the next few seasons.

The development of DryDye follows the launch of the first commercially available waterless textile dyeing machines that use CO2 instead of water from DyeCoo Textile Systems B.V., a Netherlands-based machinery builder.

The principle of dyeing fabrics with super-critical CO2 is not new, but it was used for the first time on a commercially large scale earlier this year during DyeCoo’s partnership with Nike. Inc. Previously, production problems has centred on the huge pressures needed to liquefy CO2  DyeCoo machines operate at around 250 bar and therefore safety is a big aspect.

As this technology is brought to scale, we also understand that DyeCoo has developed a sampling machine which reduces further fabric wastage during the testing stage. The removal of water from the textile dyeing process also eliminates the risk of effluent discharge, a known environmental hazard while the CO2 used in DyeCoo’s dyeing process is also reclaimed and reused.