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The use of cellulosic or lignocellulosic materials (cellulose fibers, wood fibers, nut flour, jute, sisal, etc.) as filler for reinforcement of polymeric matrices has increased lately. They are rich in lignin, hemicellulose and cellulose and are used for various applications depending on their composition and physical properties. An increasing world trend towards the maximum utilization of natural resources through new processes and products has been driving to the study and exploration of rich renewable natural materials generating new applications to lignocellulosic fibers in the automotive industry, production of adhesives, lactic acid, active carbon and furfural 1,2 in the development of composites. Apart from the well-known fibers (flax, ramie, jute, etc.) one of the most interesting among the lesser known fibers is the luffa cylindrical fiber. This fiber is quite common in the mid-south of America as well. As for Turkey, it grows well in the areas of the Mediterranean climate. The Luffa cylindrica fibers are a subtropical plant of the cucurbitaceous family, which produces a fruit with a fibrous vascular system. Their size varies in relation to the areas they grow in ranging from 15 cm to1m, or even more than one meter in certain kinds 3 (Fig. 1). It has wide use of Luffa cylindrica as scouring pads during bathing, for the manufacture of palm sole, inner soler for filters, leather straps for automobiles and other engine, etc. in the industrial sector 4 .

In this study, the wool fabric was mordanted with natural mordant agents extracted from the waste of three different plants. After the mordanting process, the samples were dyed with the natural dye extracted from the cone of Chamaecyparis Lawsoniana. Finally, the fastness properties, color strength (K/S) values and antimicrobial properties of samples were investigated in terms of the type of mordant.

In the colouring processes of textile products, more environmentally friendly chemicals and finishing methods should be used instead of conventional ones that harm the environment every day, so that alternative realistic ways to protect nature, both academically and industrially, could be possible. Due to some inconveniences caused by synthetic dyes that are widely used today, in this study, ultrasonic dyeing of wool fabric with Hibiscus sabdariffa was carried out after environmental‐friendly air vacuum plasma application which increased the absorption of the dyes into the textile material. According to the performance results, colour strengths of the wool fabrics were increased significantly. Surface morphology analysis was carried out and etching effects of air vacuum plasma treatment were clearly seen on the micrographs of the treated wool fabrics. An environmental‐friendly green process was achieved through this study and it was concluded that vacuum air plasma treatment could be an alternative green‐process as a pretreatment to increase the dye up‐take of natural dyeing treatment. Moreover, in this study, a feed‐forward neural network (FFNN) model was presented and used for predicting the dyeing properties (L, a, b and K/S) of samples. The experimental results showed that the presented model achieves the regression values greater than 0.9 for all dyeing properties. Consequently, it was considered that the proposed FFNN was successfully modelled and could be efficiently utilised for dyeing characteristics of wool fabrics dyed with natural dye extracted from Hibiscus sabdariffa.