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Increasing ecoefficiency of textile wet processes has become an important topic in our research group. Reducing agents required for the application of vat and sulfur dyes cannot be recycled, and they lead to problematic waste products. Therefore, modern aspects of economical and ecological requirements are not fulfilled. The application of direct electrochemical reduction of indigo as a novel route has been investigated by spectrophotometric and voltammetric experiments in laboratory cells. Experiments yield information about the reaction mechanism and the kinetics, and they show the possibility of this new route for production of water- soluble indigo, which offers tremendous environmental benefits.

The rate of mixing might exert a decisive influence on the product distribution in competitive chemical reactions. This review gives an account of existing mixing-sensitive single-phase liquid-liquid chemical reactions where all reactants and products are soluble, and which have the potential to be employed as an exploratory 'microprobe' to investigate the local flow characteristics and the mixing process at the molecular scale. In addition, the appropriate literature references are given to the existing theoretical ad hoc mixing-reaction models and to the recent progress in simulating the coupling between mixing and chemical reaction by numerical calculations.